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Re-Formatting and Completely Wipe?

I

IanE

Senior member
Howdy everyone!

I was wondering if you re-format a harddrvie, does it completely get rid of everything?

If not, is there a way to totally clean a harddrive and have the pc as if it's the first time the OS is being loaded?

Also, when you re-format, all you do is boot off of the Windows CD and hit install, and replace the current Windows then just continue installing as normal, right?

Did it once before, many many years ago and I can't remember...

Thanks in advance!

Ian
 
Great!

Also, are my steps correct?

"all you do is boot off of the Windows CD and hit install, and replace the current Windows then just continue installing as normal, right?"
 
I would write down hardware specs, and download any needed drivers you may need to install XP, assuming laptop had win2k or win98se on before, xp might install with no problems, but just in case.

i think with DELL's there is a serial # that can be used to see complete specs on DELL's website.
 
It's on 98SE right now, but they don't have anything on it. All it was ever used for was checking eBay and Google... has basic drivers installed, I think they're all Windows recommended drivers...

That's right! You can see the specs on Dell's site, good thinking! I'll check that!
 
Put in the Windows XP CD, when it boots select install Windows XP, then delete all the partitions, then format the drive with NTFS and let it install Windows.

If you still have Windows 98 on there, install Belarc Advisor...it will tell you most of the hardware that is in the system. You can then get the drivers for the hardware online. However, if the computer is old enough to run Windows 98, then Windows XP probably has most of the drivers built in already.
 
They say it's 5 years old... it's never been updated and it was last defragged 671 days ago... it's in pretty bad shape mostly due to viruses, Bloodhound specifcally, and tons of spyware and things they can't remove. I ran my Norton2005 and Adaware and it all found nothing, but it's obvious that they're there.

Thanks for all the help guys!
 
If you want to nuke it extremely thoroughly, one option is DBAN. A get-me-by solution is to throw it into a Win2000/XP system, delete the partitions, create a new NTFS partition, and run this command (let's assume it got drive letter F:)

cipher /w:F:\

and Windows will write three layers of EFS-encrypted junk data onto the drive and then delete it all, to obscure what was there before.
 
I think just formatting is good enough to restore a new windows configuration...

The file system won't be able to see the previous files, and windows won't have any reason to look. I've always done it by just formatting, never had problems.

If you don't have sensitive data, just delete the partition in windows setup, create a new one to take up the whole drive, and keep installing 😛
 
Originally posted by: mechBgon
If you want to nuke it extremely thoroughly, one option is DBAN. A get-me-by solution is to throw it into a Win2000/XP system, delete the partitions, create a new NTFS partition, and run this command (let's assume it got drive letter F:)

cipher /w:F:\

and Windows will write three layers of EFS-encrypted junk data onto the drive and then delete it all, to obscure what was there before.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

 
Quick format tells the drive that its ok to write over everything on the drive.

Long format (not reccomended) goes to every single part of your drive and flips it back to 0.
Its is used for OEMs not end users and makes no differance in preformance.
 
Originally posted by: KoolDrew
Originally posted by: P0ldy
Originally posted by: barnett25
Formating erases everything from your HD. It will be like you just bought a new, empty drive.
Click to expand...
Not really.
Click to expand...

While you are correct he is just reformatting and putting another OS on it. There is no reason to do all that.
Click to expand...

Agreed - if you are selling a drive, then go ahead and overwrite it with something like DBAN. If it's just going to another PC, or getting a new OS, formatting is fine. Do wipe out all the partitions and do a full format though, to make sure that the viruses are wiped out. For infected drives, I prefer to boot to DOS off a write-protected floppy disk, and use IBM's zap utility on the drive - then boot to Windows and partition and format. ZAP wipes out partition data on the drive, making the data effectively invisible to the OS - any viruses on it wouldn't be accessible to activate.
 
When I want to nuke everything i use my scsi card and perform a low level format. from what i understand this returns the drive to its original state, but should not be done too often as it can damage the drive.
 
Originally posted by: barnett25
Formating erases everything from your HD. It will be like you just bought a new, empty drive.
Click to expand...

Tell the FBI that 🙂 Id love to see someone get an advance warning of an FBI piracy bust, so they format their computers thinking they are fine. The truth is you never clean your harddrive, and unless you magnetize/ burn it, the info is still recoverable. Just too expensive and timeconsuming a process for the normal person.
 
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