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Geek Culture / [LOCKED] Cleanest Format

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Yian
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Location: Nicosia, Cyprus(the Greek half)
Posted: 10th Sep 2003 16:18
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How do i achieve the cleanest format of a HDD meaning the nearest to complete wipe out of all data?

-john D.
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Van B
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Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 10th Sep 2003 16:50
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Fdisk and delete all the physical partitions, then assign your partitions again and format - clean as a whistle after that.

I suggest making a boot disk that supports CD-Roms, like a win98se boot disk, then copy the Fdisk program and the Format program onto it from your windows\command directory if they're not already on the floppy. You really want to boot from floppy then wipe the HDD, especially if this is to obliterate any nasty viruses. When partitioning your hard disk, plan it out, decide how much space you want for your system files, 2-3gb is usually plenty. Remember that the smaller the partition, the faster it'll work, so keeping your system partition small is a good idea in terms of performance.


Van-B

My cats breath smells of cat food.
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Yian
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Posted: 10th Sep 2003 17:08
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a bit confusing there..do i format after or before fdisk? i think you can't delete active partitions...

-john D.
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MushroomHead
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Posted: 10th Sep 2003 17:16 Edited at: 11th Sep 2003 13:21
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Do FDISK first, set up partitions and boot disk partition (FDISK will ask you to reboot for changes to take effect), then format the partition after reboot.

Format does not necessarily wipe your disk, the old data is still there (a tool like Eraser or BCWipe wipes everything including your fav porn collection )
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the_winch
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Location: Oxford, UK
Posted: 10th Sep 2003 17:48
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Do you mean to reinstall. If so just check the partions are too your likeing and format c: /q.

If you mean to get rid of the data so no-one else can read it then it depends on your level of paranoia. Windows is proberly not the easyist of cheapest way of doing it.

This page may help
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/debian-user-200204/msg00989.html
I don't really handle disks with info thats very confidential. In the rare case that I do I would.
dd if=/dev/zero of /dev/hdx

Is anyone really going to try and get the data?
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CattleRustler
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Posted: 10th Sep 2003 18:29
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zero-fill the drive, then partition and format.

-RUST-
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Ian T
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Posted: 10th Sep 2003 18:32
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'How do i achieve the cleanest format of a HDD meaning the nearest to complete wipe out of all data?'

Dosen't that sound like he's trying to save the stuff he has? I hope he hasn't wiped his disk already

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Martyn Pittuck
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Posted: 11th Sep 2003 11:09
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Well maybe he is selling his comp and does not want files to be undeleted...

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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 11th Sep 2003 11:23
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There are various prgrams that will wipe the disk/files using either the US Defence standard or higher - after which you can then format a few times.


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22
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Posted: 11th Sep 2003 13:16
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just get a zero fill utility, kills 100% of all known cyberdata...dead.

Mentor.
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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 11th Sep 2003 13:44
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Zero fill on its own still allows recoverable data back to the last 7 or so wipes..


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Posted: 11th Sep 2003 15:22
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zero fill has recoverable data?, since when?, you can`t recover data from a zero filled drive unless you dismantle it in a clean room and use special heads/software to read the shadowing from previous writes, thats not very probable for your average secondhand computer purchaser, if you are that serious about data security then fit a new drive and throw the old one on the fire before you sell it (jk), or just write or get a dos utility that keeps filling the disk with one huge collection of files filled with random numbers and then deleting it again and then refilling it etc a few hundred times over, you won`t recover nothing from a drive treated like that, trust me .

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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 11th Sep 2003 17:04 Edited at: 11th Sep 2003 17:10
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Yes, you can even if its zero wiped - its to do with the electrical properties of magnetic material - most data recovery people can recover data from 7 wipes.

The best way is to totally destroy the hard drive, especially all the platters.


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CattleRustler
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Posted: 11th Sep 2003 18:04
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Yeah but what are we talking about here, the kid just want's to trash the drive right? Just use the bios to zero fill the drive, then partition and format, and be done - like this thread should be
OMG



-RUST-
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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 11th Sep 2003 18:08
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Yes, I think it has run its course...


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