Nuke My Drive!

[neyo the king]

Ok, I have a computer currently on my bed, just begging to have its hard drive cleared so I can sell it in a yard sell. Problem: I have no idea how to do it. What's the best way to clear my hard drive?

[Elminster_Amaur]

Format it. At least 3 times if you have had secure files on it at any point in time. If any incriminating evidence is in there, I'd suggest wiping 10 times. If you still have a windows CD, that will do it for you. Although, it would probably be mean of you to sell it without an OS. But...hehe, put Linux on there so that whoever buys it has no idea what to do. I forgot the command for formating without the disk.

[neyo the king]

Well, It just so happens that I lost the disk...

[Inbred Chocobo]

Get a boot disk to wipe it out. Just get a blank floopy and use this website (http://www.bootdisk.com/) to get one. Then, start your computer with said floppy and you should go into dos. Then type format c: and you will wipe out your hard drive. You will have no operation system with the computer, but it does wipe it out. Oh, and there is a computer help thread that this question should have gone too. Which is here (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showthread.php?t=7759)

[Deathosaurus Wrecks]

magnet + harddrive = free disk space*

try it at home kids!**

*does not equal free disk space
**don't try this at home

[gizmodude4]

the dos command is fdisk, i think

[Elminster_Amaur]

D'os? Hehe, just kidding. I know that in the older Winbloze versions fdisk was not in the dos shell, and you needed the boot disk to run it. fdisk is actually a program, and there's another command you need. I think it's "format (disk label goes here):" but I'm not sure. I still wouldn't recommend wiping without a boot disk for some OS that the compy can run, because someone'll be pissed at you for selling them a OS-less box. And generally, even if you tell them before-hand, they still get mad, unless it's a knowledgable person. Of course, who in their right mind buys computers from a yard sale anyway? People who have friends who are A+B=C qualified, am I right? Right?!

So...put an OS on the box.

[mxyzptlk]

There are two ways I know of to nuke a hard drive.
First is low-level format. Check who made the drive, go to their website, and download the proper tools for a low-level format onto a floppy. It should boot in dos. From there, just use the appropriate switch (the website will have given you instructions) and wait several hours. This is different from normal formats in that it erases partitions and everything else. Good for the paranoid.

The other way is to put electricity through the hard drive. All you need to do this is a mouse cord. With this method, you'll be lucky if your hard drive is the only thing you fry, and if the hard drive even works. Good for destroying evidence without the mess of the shotgun format.

In review, regular format:Bolt 3::low-level format:Hadoken

[Elminster_Amaur]

But if you're really that paranoid, I know that there is a program that will wipe your entire hd and re-write with 0s 10 times. It may take a while, but it's pretty much guaranteed that nothing will be recovered from it.

[TheI3rokenspiral]

I like the idea of wiping it out and installing Linux. The buyer will go ape-shit, but it will be funny.

[Witness1]

KillDisk (http://www.killdisk.com) is an easy way to wipe a hard drive. Just make a bootable copy of it and run.

If you are really paranoid, you can buy KillDisk and you can nuke it conforming to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard.

It cost about 25 bucks for one copy of KillDisk, I think.

[synkr0nized]

magnet + harddrive = free disk space*

try it at home kids!**

*does not equal free disk space
**don't try this at home


You win.






As said by others, I would format it a few times. Then clean-install. Seeing as you don't have the disk, this may be tricky... How old is the laptop? if it is not too recent, perhaps actually sell it without the OS, letting the buyer make that decision.

...actually, what kind of specs are we talking about and what kind of price, if I may ask?

[neyo the king]

So, what yuor saying is that, if I do wipe the hard drive, if I don't have the disk its OS came in, I would have to sell it and tell them that it is OS-less?

Is it really worth the trouble? The computers not that good. I got it about... oh... 5-6 years ago, and I never updated it, so it has 5-6 year old technology. Maybe I could sell the case?

[Patrat]

If you wanted to perminatly kill a hard drive...well... nuke it!
Microwave oven kill many electronic devices pretty well. Try putting a cd in there and you'll see what i mean

*WARNING* Attempting this may reduce the life of your microwave, so don't try it too often.

[C-dog]

If you've had financial information or any other important info on your hard drive, you really should wipe it properly. Contrary to what a lot of people here are saying, standard formatting won't wipe the drive (also called high-level formatting. Any option to format on the windows boot disc or the fdisc command in dos is a high level format.) The reason is that high-level formatting just re-writes the file system of the disc (the directory that points the computer to data on the disc.) Before formatting, the file system has pointers to all data stored on the disc. After formatting, the pointers are gone and the computer thinks the disc is empty, but the data is still there. Formatting a second or third time won't help either. It'll just re-write the file system again, erasing pointers that are already erased. It would be relatively easy for anyone to restore the data on a hard drive that's been high-level formatted.

To properly wipe the disc and destroy data on it, you have to low-level format. Low-level formatting fills every single bit on the disc with either a 1, a 0, or a random pattern of 1s and 0s. The most common type of low-level formatting is zero-filling, which fills the disc with zeros (duh). Killdisk, which was linked in a post above (sorry I don't have a link), will do this. The free demo will zero-fill the disk once. Data is still recoverable because it still leaves a magnetic signature on the disc. To FULLY wipe the disc according to US standards, you should zero-fill the disc about ten times. You can do this by using the demo killdisk ten times or by buying the full version, which will do it automatically. Even the pentagon won't be able to recover data on a disc that's been zero-filled ten times. Unless you have super-spy information on your disc though, a single zero-fill will be enough.

Zero-filling takes time (several hours depending on disc size) but it's the only way to wipe a disc and still use it afterwards.

If you want to install windows on a low-level formatted disc, you'll have to high-level format it first (in order to write the file system).


OR, if the computer is really old and worthless, just smash the hard drive. It's faster, easier, and free. How big is your hard drive? If it's smaller than 20GB, you'll hardly get any money for it (unless you sell to someone who's not knowledgeable about computers.)

[neyo the king]

Well, I just wanted to thank everyone for the help, and to say we decided not to sell it, we're going to give it away for parts.

Thanks for the help, everyone.