Completely wiping my hard drive.

[FieryGoose]

So I'm trying to sell my master drive but I'm a little worried that whoever I sell it to might get some of my personal information or something, so what's the best way to clean it before selling it. Keep in mind that I have a slave drive that has all my music pictures and videos on it and I don't want to accidentally clear that drive. So what ever hard drive cleaner works well should have a choice on what hard drive to clean. Also I was wondering if there is a way to just reformat my hard drive without installing a fresh copy of windows with the reformat, do I just take the disc out at a certain point. Also when I clean or reformat the drive It will be in my computer running as a master, so what ever method you guys recommend should work without having to stick my drive into another computer to get the job done or anything.
*I guess it's probably pretty safe to just reformat the drive instead or some deep cleaning but I don't even know how to reformat without installing a fresh copy of windows on it.*

There's probably a lot of reformat/cleaning tools on Google, but I want to know from your guy's experience which one to use or are recommended so I can avoid all the gimmicky cleaners and such. The only thing is I don't want to spend any money on a drive cleaner. Thanks.:cheers:

 

[Sedako]

Here's a program I use to retrieve and remove deleted files:

http://rapidshare.com/files/70862677/Restoration.exe.html

Basically, you just select the drive in the drop box, click "Search Deleted Files" and it will list what it finds on the drive. Then, along the top, you select "Others" and select "Delete Completely". This process will take a while, but the odds of recovering any important data with software available to the general public are slim to none. Pretty much only the FBI or similar firm would be able recover any sort of data from it. For assurance, rescan the drive after it's done and see if it can find anything else. If so, repeat the process and you should be all set.

Make sure you reformat the drive completely before doing this. You can do this easily from in windows. From the start menu, select "Run" and type "cmd" in the box that pops up. Depending on what letter your drive is (lets assume it's G: ), type the following in the command prompt:

format G:

It will then ask you if you want to format the drive. Type "y" with no quotation marks and it will format.

 

[phantomdesign]

You can pop in your windows CD, get to the point where you're supposed to chose your drive, delete the partition, create a new one, then format as NTFS (NOT quick).

Unless they're like some sort of super-hacker with specialized equipment & a lot of time/money to waste, it's not going to happen & even then they might not be able to.

 

[Asus]

Just need to do a zero-fill format (low level format). Writes all bits to ZERO. No data left.
Regular format (even the long format) and delete in windows leaves the bits but just makes the drive mark them as free for use for new files so they can be overwriten. I believe the reason the long format with Windows take so long is because it simply checks each bit for errors, not zero fill.

Otherwise you can easily retrieve the 'formated' or 'deleted' files with software, free at times.

 

[Barney Fife]

At where I work, when we're done with a drive, before we throw it away (We never sale or give it away); we delete the content of the drive (I can't tell you how because its classified), then drill two holes; one through the actual disk plates, and one through the chip. Then throw it away in a special-locked dumpster, then, someone comes and takes it for farther destruction. Then again, I work for DHS.

You should do something similar, if that drive stored personal info. Otherwise just delete the partition and make it RAW drive, before selling it.

Good Luck.

 

[Asus]

lol
"Thanks for letting me buy your drive.
It has holes in it...what the crap?!"

The holes themselves probably don't do too much besides make it not function. The surface is still magnetized (1's or 0's) so that is probably what the Shred-it company takes care of. Interesting that companies do so much to their drives to dispose of them safely.

 

[stewie]

So I'm trying to sell my master drive but I'm a little worried that whoever I sell it to might get some of my personal information or something, so what's the best way to clean it before selling it. Keep in mind that I have a slave drive that has all my music pictures and videos on it and I don't want to accidentally clear that drive. So what ever hard drive cleaner works well should have a choice on what hard drive to clean. Also I was wondering if there is a way to just reformat my hard drive without installing a fresh copy of windows with the reformat, do I just take the disc out at a certain point. Also when I clean or reformat the drive It will be in my computer running as a master, so what ever method you guys recommend should work without having to stick my drive into another computer to get the job done or anything.
*I guess it's probably pretty safe to just reformat the drive instead or some deep cleaning but I don't even know how to reformat without installing a fresh copy of windows on it.*

boy you guys miss a lot of important info.

goose: you are reformatting and selling the drive that your windows is installed on. lets think about that for a minute. if you DONT wipe the windows install too, then whoever gets your drive gets your windows install etc too. you also say you want to avoid reinstalling windows: you are giving away the drive with windows currently on it. youre kinda going to HAVE to reinstall windows NO MATTER WHAT.

now that you (hopefully) understand these very important things, i suggest you:

*take all your important info from BOTH drives, and back it up (to disks, or another HDD).

*unplug the drive you are SELLING.

*reformat and install windows on the drive you are KEEPING.

*plug in the drive you are selling.

*reformat it using a program that writes zeros to every sector.

*profit.


unless of course you have a new HDD that will be your windows (master) drive. then you would unplug all drives, plug that one in, install windows, and then take what you wanted from the one you are selling, then wipe it and write zeros on it.

 

[Barney Fife]

lol
"Thanks for letting me buy your drive.
It has holes in it...what the crap?!"

The holes themselves probably don't do too much besides make it not function. The surface is still magnetized (1's or 0's) so that is probably what the Shred-it company takes care of. Interesting that companies do so much to their drives to dispose of them safely.

LOl. Its funny you said that. I kept asking my superiors; why don't we just shred the drive and kill it, instead of torturing the damn thing? The answer is always "protocol" a word you can ONLY find in government dictionaries.

BTW Shred-it isn't a name of a company. If you get my drift. lol.

 

[Sedako]

Stewie, I was assuming he had windows installed on a second drive and didn't need any of the files on the drive he wants to erase. Master drive simply means that it's the master of the IDE port it's plugged into (as opposed to slave), not that it's the drive that's running windows.

 

[Asus]

Well, he's trying to sell the drive. He wants to make sure people don't get the data he sells it to. Only way to do that is zero fill the drive. There should be utilities that let you boot off a floppy or CD to do a zero-fill (just like running the Windows CD doing a regular format). If he wants to do it from windows then he'd need windows on another drive run it, either in that machine or stick the drive to format into another PC.

If you want to save your Windows install then you would need to get some software that will take an image of your drive (like Ghost) so you can put that image on a new drive exactly as it is now. Or just do a fresh install of windows and applications on a new drive. Then move the files over to it from the old drive. Maybe get an external drive or just a spare drive for backup purposes. Or blank dvds.

*I guess it's probably pretty safe to just reformat the drive instead or some deep cleaning but I don't even know how to reformat without installing a fresh copy of windows on it.*

Why do you want to install a fresh copy on this drive if you are going to be selling it?

Keep in mind that I have a slave drive that has all my music pictures and videos on it and I don't want to accidentally clear that drive.

Best to just remove the drive (when the PC is off). Then it won't come up as an option in any format utility. No mistakes then.

 

[FieryGoose]

So just to clear a few things up as of right now, my master drive(the one I'm selling) is the drive currently running windows. I don't need anything from the drive since I store all my important information on my slave drive. I was kind of hoping for a program that can clear and write zero's to the drive from the boot menu or whatever it's called since I wont be able to have windows running when i clear this drive, I'm going to be buying a replacement for my master so basically as of now there is no way for me to clear this drive from inside windows since it's running windows and my slave is storing a lot of important information so I don't want to install windows on that one.
There's not really any important information that needs to be hidden really but it would be nice to get it as clean as I possibly can. For some reason I thought that a reformat just meant prepare the drive for a fresh installation of windows, I don't intend on selling the drive with windows installed just ready for someone to install their own copy on. I hope I clarified a few things.

So as I understand it the steps I need to take are:
Delete partition
Write zeros

Can both of these be done from a bootable disc? If so what are the programs to use?
Thanks for all the help so far guys.:cheers:

 

[function9]

If the HDD you're selling is the Raptor, go to Western Digital's site and they have a utility (Data Lifeguard Diagnostic) you can download here. You'll want the DLD for DOS. If it's the Seagate I'm sure they have the appropriate program on their site (Seagate's) too here. You're looking for Seatools for DOS. I'm not familiar with Seagate's software, but there is good documentation that comes with these programs and they're pretty simple to begin with.

 

[Asus]

Yeah, I'd check the manufacturers site for their utility.

If it is the Barracuda (seagate) then you can create a bootable floppy with this utility.

 

[function9]

WD's is setup to be transfered directly to a floppy or burned to a cd (both bootable). You can choose which you want to download. Not sure about Seagate's.

 

[FieryGoose]

Yea the raptor's the one. So put WD's file onto a cd or floppy and everything is good to go for the next owner you guys think? Most of my stuff is safe(as in it will be hard for someone to recover information from it)?
By the way sorry for needing so many particulars, I'm no guru and probably a little paranoid...:|

 

[Raziaar]

I personally use Windows Washer.

 

[FieryGoose]

I got it all worked out, thanks for all the help. That WD tool is definitely a helpful little resource. Just wanted to give you all an update.