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View Full Version : How do I reformat my hard drive with XP installed?


Peter Clark
April 2nd 03, 12:40 AM
what kind of bootdisk does zapdisk run from?

personally if i need to wipe a drive, i use maxtor low
level format or maxllf. it was orginally written for maxtor
drives, but i have run it on more different hdd
manufactures than i can remember, maxtor do not seem to
offer a download anymore, but you can get a copy here:
http://ftp.hiroshi-group.com/drivers/Outils/Disques%20durs/Maxtor/40Go/

it will one pass null your entire drive - enough to stop
most people with recovery programs, however its depend how
secure you want:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html
describes some recovery techniques - a better bet maybe to
use eraser which can do 35pass wipes. there are some
commercially available machines that can blast drives with
very strong magnetic fields to completly wipe the data - i
forget the company - i have heard from a banking company
that they physically crush their drives after use...


>-----Original Message-----
>ZapDisk is a great utility, it fits on a boot disk. When
>you run it, it wipes the MBR and track 0. You have to
>reformat the drive.
>>-----Original Message-----
>>And how do I clear off all info on disk, (government
>>format/wipe)?

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