Format Hard Drive

[Cyril]

Hi, I just simply want to format my drive as I am selling PC. Current operating system is Windows XP. I do not have copy of OS or boot disk. Can someone please advise best way to do this. Thanks in advance.

[shapeless]

the program I use is Dan's Boot and Nuke. It can be found here (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=61951). It's completely free and is a great program. Just stick it on a floppy disk or bootable CD (ISO edition) and boot from it. From there, you can choose many different methods of writing all your data over. You can also choose the number of passes, which is determined by the sensitivity of your data. The more sensitive, the more passes, and visa versa.

There are many other programs for this, but I believe Dan's Boot and Nuke is the simplist and easiest to use.

[Virtualbody1234]

Here's another similar one: http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

[Appzalien]

Go with Kill disk, it specifically wipes a drive so the new owner can't run recovery software on it and get your data back.

[mbucari1]

i uploaded a piece of software to demonoid a while back called wipe-drive. It does the same thing as kill disk. I haven't used killdisk, so I don't know which one is more efficient.

[peat moss]

Most on the market are fine ,most people you sell it to won't be able to recover anything anyway . Why , they don't know how or have access to programs that recover deleted files . I'd just format using Ultimate boot cd it has all the tools mentioned here . Look under Hard Disk Wiping Tools section .


http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

[S!X]

Hi, I just simply want to format my drive as I am selling PC. Current operating system is Windows XP. I do not have copy of OS or boot disk. Can someone please advise best way to do this. Thanks in advance.

If it's a seagate drive, you can use the DOS version of SeaTools which you can obtain from their website.