Reformatting Hard Drive

[smiles4me]

I am getting ready to re-format my hard drive, 10 GB. I have wn 98se and was wondering if anyone could direct me to step by step instructions. I have done it a few times, but would feel better if i had a back up in case I have an attack of the stupids.

[monkeyhead]

1.get a 98 boot disk form bootdisk.com.
2.Then place it in the 3 1/2 drive.
3.restart the computer
4.let the disk load
5.Type the letter of your hardisk (I.e C:\)
6.

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[ShockAndAwe^i^]

Your right there is a lot more to it than that but tell me why would you want to use killdisk? :huh:
Unless you want the old data to be unrecoverable?
Is that better than just reformatting? :huh:

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[ShockAndAwe^i^]

Thank you very much!
I'm gonna try it today as I am having probs with norton.
It keeps causing cluster losses.It used to work fine but after I install the updates via live update I get disk errors.
Thanks again! :D
I'll be back tonight after the totally clean install. B)

[ShockAndAwe^i^]

balamm
I used killdisk to do a clean install.
I left some files in the recycle bin before the wipe.
After I ran killdisk,partitioned and formatted I reinstalled windows to find those files in the new recycle bin. :huh:
Whats going on here? :blink:



Btw I used the free version which allows only 1 pass.

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[echidna]

Nice killdisk sounds good, thanx balamn :)
do you know if killdisk will erase redhat? getting RH of a disk is always a pain
& smiles4me i highly recomend partitioning your disk if you've only got one to make data retention far simpler

[ijc_2003]

why dont you just go to the webpage of your hard drive make and download there tools
these also wipe the information from the hard drive and reset it back to factory default.

ibm tool is here Drive Fitness Software (http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&q=hard+disk&uid=psg1MIGR-4HXKVX&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8&cc=us&lang=en)

maxtor tool is here POWERMAX (http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm)

western digital tools here western digtial (http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp)

segate tool is here, never used this 1 because i dont buy segate hard drives
Segate tools (http://www.seagate.com/products/discsales/discextras/A1i1.html)

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[deathman102]

in win 98 you want to boot into dos and type in these comands to kill a disk


c:\format c: /s

do the on screen instructions and it wipes the lot. remembe you have to put the system swithc s in (/s) otherwise c: wont have a master boot record for the bios to detect :blink:

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[ShockAndAwe^i^]

Balamm-Ok that's very odd. How many drives do you have and did you have any drive manufacturer stuff installed on the disk?

I have 2 drives and i'm not shure about the drive manufacturer stuff.

Balamm- You started the PC from a win98 startup floppy and then ran Killdisk from floppy with the Killdisk.exe command?

Yup! win me boot disk and ran killdisk from floppy.

Ballam- Killdisk should wipe even easy bios and lilo, grub, etc. How long did it run and what was the disk size?

Yes it ran for about 10 to 15 but the drive is only a 4 gig Maxtor HD.
My other drive is 20.

Balamm - On multiple drives make sure you only have one connected as a single master and remove the cable from the rest. Do them one at a time to be sure the right one is wiped.

I think you've nailed it!
I've done this before but did'nt think of it.
The 4 gig hd is the master.

Balamm - There's another trick you can use to "break" protection on a stubborn drive. Just do two 10% passes with killdisk and then do a full wipe again. (you just reboot with the startup disk again to run another pass)

Hehe :shifty:
This sounds good too I think i'll try this first.

Balamm - If you really want to confirm it's clean, type- kick me to fosi - into google and look for pirates cove. there's three active fosi links there. He has easy recovery pro 6(?) on all of them. Make the dos floppys and run them before you install to make sure it's all gone.

Hey...I have easy recovery professional edition and the floppys are made.
Is 6 newer?
Thanks again :D
Btw I don't have a copy of my bios on floppy.
It's old and there is'nt a new one for this system.
Do you know how I can copy it to floppy?
Is it possible?
Thanks for the powermax tip!
I had no idea.

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[ijc_2003]

its funny how the format tool of the powermax tool took 4 and half hours to format a 60gb hd drive the ibm 1 took about 1 hour. So i take it the powermax tool is cleaning the hard drive to a full and if you dont belive me then try bringing it back with norton super ultilitys disk recover software, it wont bring anything back because i've tryed it (doh). nothing more to say!!.

[ShockAndAwe^i^]

This is an old comuter.
Don't Laugh!
It's all I got right now.
Here's the info? :unsure:

< System Mainboard >
Manufacturer: Intel Corporation
MP Support: No
Model: JN440BX
Version: AA729057-407
Serial Number: :P


< System Chipset >
Model: Intel Corporation 82443BX/ZX 440BX/ZX CPU to PCI
Bridge (AGP Implemented)
Bus(es): ISA X-Bus AGP PCI USB SMBus/i2c
Front Side Bus Speed: 1x 99MHz (99MHz data rate)
In Order Queue Depth: 4 req(s)

< Logical/Chipset Memory Banks >
Bank 0 Setting: 64MB SDRAM 7-1-1-1R 5-1-1-1W 2-2-2CL
Speed: 1x 99MHz (99MHz data rate)
Multiplier: 1/1x
Refresh Rate: 15.60µs
Power Down Mode: Yes
Fixed Hole Present: No

From SANDRA 2002

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty&#39;s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[fallenknight308]

Here&#39;s how I format mine: Insert boot/restore disk, bring up dos, type: "gwscan", select "write zeros to drive", restart when done, back to dos again type: "fdisk", create a new partition, restart, dos, type: format <space> c:
Take out boot disk, insert image restoration disk (your OS). Restart.
*whew* B)

[ShockAndAwe^i^]

Thanks balamm&#33; :D
Thanks everyone&#33; :D
Hey i had to do that(write zero&#39;s)with a tech on the phone a long time ago.
Completely forgot about that thanks.
I&#39;m gonna save that&#33;

I can&#39;t believe you found that page at intel.
I tried finding one(bios)there before and did&#39;nt find that page.
I found a bios there but it would&#39;nt install.
btw it says it&#39;s non os dependent.

Hey
If I install the wrong bios,how can I recover from that?

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty&#39;s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[smiles4me]

amatuer question.....

what does write zeros to drive accomplish?

and....

think i am too green to understand...but before when i did this, don&#39;t remember using that command, and didn&#39;t have to have bios information...

sorry for my ignorance...please guide me....i have printed out instructions for fdisk and re-format from

fdisk.radified.com

and am hoping that will do it.

thanks for all your help

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty&#39;s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[ShockAndAwe^i^]

Excellent&#33;
I&#39;m saving your post to .txt