Need some hardware help!

[Remacno]

My mom wants me to wipe the hard drive on her computer but I can't seem to find out how to do this. Can anyone possibly give me a walkthrough for doing this? Thanks!

[Olle P]

I suppose she wants it to be pretty difficult to retrieve any previous data from it after wiping, but it should still be in running condition, right? (So she can hand it over to somebody else for future use.)

- If she just want a clean slate to start all over using it with the same or newer OS you just insert the OS installation disk, reformat the HDD and install everything by the installation instructions.

- If she just wants it wiped, as described above, it's probably easier to move the HDD to another computer and then wipe it using some shredder program that overwrite all data with garble a couple of times before or between reformats. (CCleaner seems to have some such function, but I know there are better programs around.)

Cheers
Olle

[Remacno]

Okay...so then there should be a reformat option when you put in the OS disc upon booting right? If so then that should be easy enough. I only have one computer at the moment so I can't do the alternative of swapping it to another computer to whipe it.

[RagingShadow07]

Yeah, put in the OS disc, and set it to Delete and Format the drive you want wiped. It'll delete it, reformat it, and re-install Windows.

[Bruce Normann]

If you've been asked to "wipe" the disk, I suspect there is something on it that she wants completely eradicated. There are several utilities that can do this, and most can be run from a bootable CD, so you can use the one computer you have to do the job.

Here's one: Darik's Boot And Nuke (http://www.dban.org/faq)

If you do a search, you'll find many more.

After you nuke it, just reinstall Windows, as normal.
You may have to re-partition the drive, depending on what program you use.

BR, Bruce.

[Daryl Greene]

I bet the idea is to do a reinstall on a freshly wiped and formatted HDD. Doing that actually depends on whether or not your OS is on a rescue disk or not. Never seen a rescue disk give the option to format. But I do believe that Hirens Boot CD may have an option to do that.

[RagingShadow07]

GParted is also a bootable Live CD with Delete and Format options, but it's not one of the 'nukes' that above posts are mentioning, to the best of my knowledge.

[robert17]

This is a test of the "can I get to BMR's forums" effort.