Wiping a hard drive.

[Speed55]

I need some help finding a free program to wipe a hardrive clean. Preferably something i can download, burn to a cd, and boot to format.

The computer is a dell inspiron 8100 laptop that i installed fedora on, but now i can't get it off.
I tried booting off the windows disk, but it doesn't get to the point of giving me the option to format.  
I tried the fdisk command from the fedora command prompt and that didn't work either.
I don't have an internet connection with the laptop.

Thanks

[alskahawk]

I usually use a hard drive disk that comes with my HD (western digital) I use that to format it.

[Speed55]

Thanks.

Don't have one of those though.

[Ghosth]

Boot with your windows XP disk, should give you the option to install into an existing drive, or partition and format.

Delete the existing partition, repartition and format, and you should be all set.

[Skuzzy]

Seagate and Maxtor both have low level formatters available for thier drives.

[Tigger29]

His biggest problem is that he has Fedora on it.

You'll definitely want to obtain a Windows boot-disk floppy.  Personally I like the OEM Windows ME floppy... has all the utilities you need to do this.

First boot from the disk.

Then type FDISK /MBR   (This will wipe the master boot record)

Then run FDISK and use it to wipe all of the partitions.. (The will most likely appear as NON-DOS).

Exit Fdisk.. hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot.

Type FDISK again... this time create a new partition.. -OR- you can just boot from an XP CD and allow it to partition and reformat the drive from there.

Visit http://www.bootdisk.com  and you can download just about any bootable floppy from there.  You might need to use a Windows computer with a floppy drive to make it though.

[Easyscor]

Originally posted by Speed55
I need some help finding a free program to wipe a hardrive clean. Preferably something i can download, burn to a cd, and boot to format.

The computer is a dell inspiron 8100 laptop that i installed fedora on, but now i can't get it off.
I tried booting off the windows disk, but it doesn't get to the point of giving me the option to format.  
I tried the fdisk command from the fedora command prompt and that didn't work either.
I don't have an internet connection with the laptop.

Thanks

Step carefully.

Sounds like the same thing HP does. Even though a "Pavilion Media Center" was purchased with Windows XP as a separate line item in the invoice, it took a ~$50 tech support payment to discover that the key disk in the 4 disk package was missing. Once I'd reformatted the drive it was useless as a brick until HP sent the missing CD 10 days later. In hindsight, I would go buy the retail version and be done with it.

The 3 CDs, that's right 3, that came with it depended on files already installed in their "backup" area. It was nuts.

[wabbit]

Here's a Free low-level formatter if that's what you're looking for:

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.04.12-HDD-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

If you're looking to protect your privacy, ie; encrypted deletion of private files, then try 'Eraser'. It's free and has an option to create a bootable 'nuke' disk, (I believe floopy only, but not sure).

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/


Wabbit

[Tigger29]

He has Fedora installed... software compatible with windows will not install on his system (unless he has a dual-boot setup, in which case he should be able to handle this by using XP's disk management software).

This is why I recommend making a boot floppy to wipe and repartition his drive.

[Ghosth]

"RePartition!"

Deleting the partition'd  drive will remove the fedora.

Create a new partition, format and install XP into it.

Not just reinstall windows over the top, but use the windows boot cd to get easy access to partition tables.

[Speed55]

Originally posted by Tigger29
He has Fedora installed... software compatible with windows will not install on his system (unless he has a dual-boot setup, in which case he should be able to handle this by using XP's disk management software).

This is why I recommend making a boot floppy to wipe and repartition his drive.

Exactly, Fedora was the big mistake, and it's not a dual-boot setup.
I've been trying to find out how to make a bootable cd from a floppy, since the laptop doesn't have a floppy drive.
Any Ideas?


Thanks so far.

[Speed55]

Ok In case anyone else runs into the same problem this is what i did.


I booted up fedora from the live disk, then chose to insall it to the hd, but this time i clicked on the dual boot option, leaving the name for the other operating system blank. 

On the install screen, i  deleted each partition individually, then created 2 5gig partitions, installing fedora on 1, and leaving the other empty.

After the install i rebooted from the xp cd, and it finally loaded up asking me which drive to install itself on. I formated the whole drive again, and installed it on 1 10gig partition, and i was back in business.

[SD67]

Get a windows '98 installation CD, set to boot from CD and take it from there.