How to totaly erase a hard drive

[.:Roxas:.]

Well, my friend has run into a really horrible virus thats killing his computer, and he needs to erase his whole hard drive to totaly get rid of it. Can someone tell me how to do this without having to buy a new hard drive??

[#5 Lexaeus]

this is something i wanna know how to too. anyone know?

[Arcon-Death]

Googled

killmbr V1.10 (1999-04-30)

Download here

Kostis Netzwerkberatung

the first link explains it, the second has its download

[Petie]

Does your friend have the original installation disk? If so, you can also do it by putting that disk in the drive, restarting the computer, pressing any key when it says "Press any key to boot from CD," and going through the Windows Setup program.

To fully format the drive, when it says to select a partition to install to, press "d" to delete that partition (do the same for any other partition on that drive), then "c" to create a new partition when it returns to the original screen. In the creation step, select "Format this partition using NTFS" - do not use quick mode in this case.

That will do it and will also get you installing the operating system again at the same time.

[Stavros]

Couldn't you just right click My Computer and click Format and follow the prompts? Wouldn't that be easier?

Or would that not be enough.

[violent_anger]

you could just physically wipe it with a magnet.

not i'm kidding, don't do that

[Time]

Haha. VA, that would be funny if it did happen. Physically wiping renders it useless though, so yeah, don't do that.

I'm not entirley sure how to full erase a hardrive

[Stavros]

Yeah. . .but that would destroy it. . .and that's bad. . .at least, last time I checked. . .

[Azurith]

It depends on a few things.

One, being if one has an install disc for Windows XP or a Linux variation that allows partitioning.

Two, if not having such a disc, if one has a suitable floppy disc and drive on their machine.

The install discs are simple enough to use to perform highlevel formats, just set your formats as 'full' and NOT 'quick'.. and you should be fine.

However, to do it the old way:
Boot an old WIN 9x floppy 'boot disk'.
You won't be needing cd-rom drivers, so don't bother loading them.
After MS-Dos is finally loaded to the ramdrive, you should be able to see your primary harddrive as 'C:\'.
Typing 'C:' followed by a 'dir /p' command will switch you to drive C and also show you the root contents for C.. incase you don't have the correct drive.. wouldn't want to format the wrong drive, right?
The next command is pretty simple:
format c:

However, we can go further:
format c: /V: Primary_X1/FS:NTFS /X /P:10
Here, you want to format the 'C' drive. The first part will set the new partition's volume label as 'Primary_X1', while setting it as an NTFS partition. Also, you wish to dismount all data on the drive, which may cause the format to fail. Finally, you will do ten passes on each sector of Zeros. Meaning, after the drive is formated.. it is not recoverable. Government standards are normally three passes. The extra passes take alot more time.

But those are the simplest commands to format drives at higher levels. A 'low level' format would simply be:
format c: /q
Which isn't really recommended, as it doesn't actually wipe the data, merely rewrites the MBR on the harddrive.

~~Azu