How to write 0's to hard drive?

[mastaki11a]

I'm selling a couple of hard drives on ebay and i'd rather not have the people going through my files. Thanks!

 

[John]

Grab a pen and start drawing circles.

 

[BD231]

format the drives

 

[y00ycdz]

<< Grab a pen and start drawing circles. >>

 

[foofoo]

hi,
most manufacturers have drive utilities and formatting software that you can load from their web sites. for ibm drives, the software is the "drive fitness test". this will allow you to completely erase a hd and bring it back to it's "new" state. look at the web pages for the manufacturer for your drive and get the software.
hope this helps

 

[mastaki11a]

Heh Yeah I guess I could just format...just didn't want people digging up some of my more 'personal' files.

 

[Yossarian]

IF you have Norton Systemworks, it comes with a "Department of Defense" level of formatting where it will write 0's then 1's repeatedly as many times as you want. It takes forever.

 

[Yvo]

Shame on you for saying "Just format"

If I were to run a program such as EasyRecovery, I would most likely get most info back especially if the drive hadn't even been written to... I could probably get a 100% return on data.

Anywho foofoo is right.

IBM, Maxtor/Quantum, Seagate and Western Digital have Low Level Format tools available. They are normally available under the diagnostic tools these companies offer. Also if you aren't sure which one the Low Level Format tool is (as it sometimes is buried in a diagnostic program) it is the diagnostic test that mentions that after the test no data will exist.

Good luck and I definitely recommend completely wiping the drive before shipping out those drives.

Yvo

 

[AGodspeed]

Uh, what's the matter with just going into the BIOS and doing it from there? Is that so hard?

 

[Mucho]

<< Grab a pen and start drawing circles. >>



John are all of your 20081 post are as insightful as this one?

 

[John]

<< John are all of your 20081 post are as insightful as this one? >>



Do a SEARCH and find out.

 

[John]

<< Uh, what's the matter with just going into the BIOS and doing it from there? Is that so hard? >>



Forgive my ignorance, but I have not seen that option on any of the motherboards I have used the past few years.

 

[mastertech01]

<< Uh, what's the matter with just going into the BIOS and doing it from there? Is that so hard? >>

A sign of SCSI addiction.... we just forget what its like to have IDE...