Originally posted by John Z
So what is the best way of wiping a hard drive clean? A friend of mine wants to get rid of, or donate, a computer, but she doesn't want any of her data to go with it. I know that simply deleting files doesn't remove them; you should overwrite those files to truly delete them. So what is an easy way to do that? I remember the c:\format command, but does that do the trick? Do you just open a DOS prompt in Windows and type that?
You should debug first, that will def. do it...
Here are the instructions:
Instructions for Debugging a Hard Drive
Note: If you are debugging a drive due to a possible virus DO NOT SKIP ANY STEPS to insure virus is completely removed from the drive.
1) Boot to a Dos Bootable disk.
2) Type : DEBUG[Enter]
(Type the following EXACTLY as you see it. You only type what begins with a letter.)
-F 200 L1000 0 (ENTER)
-A CS:100 (ENTER)
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 (ENTER)
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 (ENTER)
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 (ENTER)
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 (ENTER)
xxxx:010C INT 13 (ENTER)
xxxx:010E INT 20 (ENTER)
xxxx:0110 (ENTER) <---BLANK LINE - IMPORTANT! >
-G (ENTER)
Program terminated normally -(CTRL)(ALT)(DEL)
3) Type: FDISK[Enter]
a. Do you wish to enable Large Disk Support : YES
b. Chose Option 1: Create Primary/Extended Partition or Logical Dos Drive
c. Chose Option 1: Create Primary DOS Partition
d. Use Maximum size allowed. (Yes)
4) REBOOT
5) Type: FDISK /MBR[Enter]
This takes you right back to an A:>
6) REBOOT
9) Type: FORMAT C:[Enter] (When you see the warning that data will be erased, hit yes, all data is already gone.)
10) Reinstall OS