Format a H.H.D

August 14, 2007

Hello Everyone

I hope you're doing fine. Well, the reason of my post is; recently I have formatted my PC several times (All of those formatting using Win XP SP 2 CD). The thing is that even thou I format the PC, the O.S. still gives me some kind of troubles, so, I've just found out recently that when you format your PC, what it really does is not "ERASE" the information contained within the HDD, but instead it labels the sector as "REWRITABLE" so the next time you are installing something, that part of your HDD will be shown as "AVAILABLE" and I'll just overwrite over those spaces. So, the thing is, what i REALLKY want to do is RE-FORMAT my HDD again and leave it like a brand-new HDD so I can install Win XP from zero again... Searching through the net I was able to get this stuff:

Other Methods of Clearing Data, Viruses or Remarking Bad Sectors
FDISK and FORMAT are part of MS-DOS (And most other types) and should be used direct from a clean virus free bootable floppy disk, If you do not have one create one now..Or download one from the PowerLoad Bootdisk Project or Bootdisk.Com
FDISK/MBR
/MBR ~ Recreate Master Boot Record on disk 1
This function is handy when an virus has infected the Master Boot Record. ~ With /MBR you can wipe-out the virus.
FORMAT C: /C
/C ~ Causes FORMAT to retest bad clusters, otherwise FORMAT will mark the clusters as bad but will not retest them.
FORMAT C: /U or FORMAT C: /U/S
/U parameter performs an UNCONDITIONAL format, which DESTROYS every byte of data on a disk by overwriting it
with with blank spaces
/U/S adds the System Files on completion

I wanna know if these commands are gonna work, is this is what I REALLY need or what. And I also wanna know what do I need to use them. Do I need the "XP Bootable Disk" (the one that comes in 6 different diskettes)? What else do I need to do? Thank you ahead of time to all of you for your help and kindness

August 14, 2007

Try KillDisk.

Active KillDisk - Hard Drive Eraser is powerful and compact software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It's a hard drive and partition eraser utility.
If you use FDISK, FORMAT utilities, or DELETE standard operating system command for data removal, there is always a chance to recover deleted files (using undelete file or some data recovery software) and use against the owner's will. We highly recommend you to run this FREE utility for the hard and floppy drives you want to dispose of, recycle, re-use, sell or donate to somebody.
Active KillDisk conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M. The most secure Gutmann's data destruction method is also implemented. You can be sure that once you clean up with Active@ KillDisk, sensitive information is purged out forever.

The free download should be sufficient but should you need the "Professional" version, you can choose to either buy it or beg, borrow or stel it from someone else who happens to have a copy.

One more thing... please don't make any further posts with the file size at it's highest level. It's not nice to look at.

August 14, 2007

Thx a lot Samurai, but... don't you think that maybe my problem lies in the fact that I need to use FDISK/MBR??

/MBR ~ Recreate Master Boot Record on disk 1

This function is handy when an virus has infected the Master Boot Record. ~ With /MBR you can wipe-out the virus.

And another thing, can I use KillDisk from DOS? Because I only have ONE HDD... So, either I format my HDD in DOS, or I won't be able to format it at all

BTW, what does this mean??