How would I completely wipe my hard drive clean?

[MikeWasHere]

Not really sure how to do this... or how to do it safely.... Thanks.

 

[AristoV300]

When you reinstall windows it gives you the option to format your drive prior to installing.

 

[TheInvincibleMustard]

After you've backed up all your important data, either

1) Use a Windows boot floppy/cd, load it up, type format C:
2) During the install, choose to erase all data on the hard drive (this works, AFAIK ... been a while since I reinstalled Windows on a used drive)
3) Use a Linux tiny-distro (like Damn Small Linux) or a Knoppix bootstrap CD and erase all data off using Linux tools

#2 is probably easiest

 

[MikeWasHere]

thanks ... got a lot of backing up to do first though.

 

[rocketPack]

Also, you can use (since I see from your signature that you have a WD drive) the Western Digital tools option that says "Write Zeros to Drive". This is on the physical level, and is essentially the only way to completely, absolutely, and once-in-for-all eliminate ANY trace of data that could possibly have ever existed. If you wanted to be so bold =).
DOS Version available for free download here:
<http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/dlg11_dos.exe>
and Win32 version available for free download here:
<http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/dlgsetup11_win.zip>
Or a complete download list available here:
<http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999>

Then, obviously, when you run Windows setup you'll need to reformat the drive.

Good luck! =)

[Edit: apparently this forum thinks > is part of a URL )

 

[mechBgon]

Writing zeros is considered the very-weak method in DBAN :evil: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban But for his purposes, I'd say

1) start Windows Setup, choose to install, and when it shows you the partitions on the drive, delete them all, and then press F3 twice to EXIT Windows Setup

2) now start Windows Setup again and set up Windows.


The reason for exiting after deleting the partitions is to prevent your boot process from having a sto0pid screen asking if you want to boot up WindowsXP, or WindowsXP? one of which is a phantom. There are other ways to fix it but this is my approach

 

[MikeWasHere]

Tried windows setup.. it's telling me that I can't delete the partition because it's using temp setup files from it....

 

[mechBgon]

You're not following the routine then. Start the computer with your WinXP CD in the drive. When you see Press any key to boot from CD..., press the Enter key. Now keep going until it sees the partitions, nuke 'em, exit, start again.

Or make a DBAN diskette or CD from http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban, DBAN your drive, and now boot from CD. That'll put your existing stuff six feet under for sure :evil:

 

[corkyg]

All good suggestions -0 but here is one that is stronger and you won't get any messages from Windows - it is not involved!

Download the Ultimate Boot Disk image and create a bootable cd with it. Then boot to it and use several of the utilities to totally zap your hard drive. The strongest is the ERASE.

After that, you can boot to your XP CD and install on a cherry drive.

UBCD