How to wipe clean a drive with NTFS on it

  • Thread starter Thread starter Katy
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Katy

Hi All, could someone tell me how I can format (wipe off) a drive with
NTFS? I am used to booting with a win98 bootdisk and formatting in DOS. I
think I've heard somewhere the NTFS file system cannot be seen in DOS?
Anyway, I couldn't see the drive when I tried last night and now I'm
stumped.

I was thinking of using partition magic to change it from NTFS to FAT32 and
then it probably would work but is there a quicker way? I have 3 drives
that I want to clean off the total drive and give away because I don't want
any info on the drive. One is a generic drive from a Gateway machine and
the other 2 are Western Digital.

Could anyone help me?

TIA for your help........... katy
 
Formatting a drive will NOT (I repeat: NOT) clean the data off of a
harddrive. It will just change the flag at the start of each file, but the
data will remain. The data CAN be recovered by someone who wants to read
your files.

There are inexpensive programs sold at some computer stores that overwrite
your harddrive seven times with mixed ones and zeros that will obliterate
your data, from all but the most determined hackers.

I have to tell you though, I myself take a large hammer to harddrives that
I no longer want to keep and I hit them until the case breaks open so I can
shatter the platters inside. That makes it rather hard to read by hackers.
 
Hi All, could someone tell me how I can format (wipe off) a drive with
NTFS? I am used to booting with a win98 bootdisk and formatting in DOS. I
think I've heard somewhere the NTFS file system cannot be seen in DOS?
Anyway, I couldn't see the drive when I tried last night and now I'm
stumped.

I was thinking of using partition magic to change it from NTFS to FAT32 and
then it probably would work but is there a quicker way? I have 3 drives
that I want to clean off the total drive and give away because I don't want
any info on the drive. One is a generic drive from a Gateway machine and
the other 2 are Western Digital.

Could anyone help me?

TIA for your help........... katy
Click to expand...

1:Download the is CDR Burnable ISO(Readme included),
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/bootd.zip

2:Scan for viruses(there are none I just like people to be secure).

3:Burn the CD.

4:Set BIOS on PC to boot from Cdrom/DVD drive you are going to use
the Cd from.

5:when Cd boots it will boot to an,"A" prompt.

6:Type aefdisk.exe \delall and press enter.

7:Shut down and switch off(Important).

This will wipe the drive.The drive is now as if never partitioned or
formatted.

Re-boot and re-partition as required.BootD ISO CD can do FAT32 if
required as it has the updated version of fdisk on it but it cannot do
NTFS file system.

You may want to print this out as it will make things easier.

8:And very important.NEVER NEVER NEVER!!!!!!!!
listen to or take any notice of DaveW as and what he knows about PCs
and windows can be written on the back of a grease proofed postage
stamp with a Biro<BFG>.

Note:
When you re-partition/reformat the drive use a,"Failsafe" way.

Partition.

Shutdown and switch of and re-boot(Important).

Format if required(Most windows installs do not require this as they
re-format the drive for you but if you do it manually then
shutdown/switch off and re-boot before you install the O.
/S.

More info here,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/hard.html
Ant probs,see sig.

HTH :)




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http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
remove obvious to reply
email (e-mail address removed)
Free original songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
Hi All, could someone tell me how I can format (wipe off) a drive with
NTFS? I am used to booting with a win98 bootdisk and formatting in DOS. I
think I've heard somewhere the NTFS file system cannot be seen in DOS?
Anyway, I couldn't see the drive when I tried last night and now I'm
stumped.
Click to expand...

As DaveW wrote, that's only effective in preventing casual
attempts at retrieving data. Even so, if you booted to dos
and used FDISK, you could delete the partition. If you
wanted the drive more ready for the next user, you could
then create a partition, and if you want it to be ready for
use, even format it to FAT32.

I was thinking of using partition magic to change it from NTFS to FAT32 and
then it probably would work but is there a quicker way?
Click to expand...

Yes, just use partition magic to delete the partition then
create a FAT32 partition. The only thing doing it the long
"... change it from NTFS to FAT32" way would do IS preserve
the data which you didn't want to do. You certainly don't
need partition magic to do it though, but if you had
parititon magic ready to go that'd work as well as anything
for ONLY creating a blank fat32 partition. It wouldn't
prevent an intent hacker from recovering the old files, let
alone someone skilled at data recovery. If it's not
sensitive data, that alone may be enough.

I have 3 drives
that I want to clean off the total drive and give away because I don't want
any info on the drive. One is a generic drive from a Gateway machine and
the other 2 are Western Digital.

Could anyone help me?
Click to expand...


Many hard drive manufacturer's utilities offer a "zero-fill"
or "low level format" utility (which is actually, still a
zero-fill renamed inappropriately) on their utilities disk.

The most effective erasure (leaving drive viable for reuse)
involves multiple passes writing to the drive. It takes
much longer and it typically only needed for sensative data.
Even so, the computer is doing the work, you only have
longer to wait.

http://www.10ts.com/hd-erase.htm

The following is easy enough, makes a boot floppy that
securely erases the drive automatically but be sure to
disconnect drives you don't want erased prior to running it.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dban/dban-1.0.5_i386.zip?download

After erasing the drive you could use Partition Magic,
FDIsk/Format or whatever you want, if you then want to make
drive ready for reuse by partitioning and formatting to
FAT32.
 
Thanks everyone for your help! I did manage to delete the non-DOS partition
but on one drive couldn't delete the extended partition due to logical
partitions but when I tried to delete the logical, fdisk said there were no
logical. The other drives I was able to delete all partitions.

It is not a bootable drive and I cannot access the C: drive to read it, is
deleting the non-DOS partition enough or could someone create a partition
and thus read it? It's not sensitive information, I don't even know what's
on the drives, but I just wanted to erase them like I can with floppies.
 
Thanks everyone for your help! I did manage to delete the non-DOS partition
but on one drive couldn't delete the extended partition due to logical
partitions but when I tried to delete the logical, fdisk said there were no
logical. The other drives I was able to delete all partitions.

It is not a bootable drive and I cannot access the C: drive to read it, is
deleting the non-DOS partition enough or could someone create a partition
and thus read it? It's not sensitive information, I don't even know what's
on the drives, but I just wanted to erase them like I can with floppies.
Click to expand...

See my post and use Aefdisk \delall command.




--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
remove obvious to reply
email (e-mail address removed)
Free original songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
Katy said:
Hi All, could someone tell me how I can format (wipe off) a drive with
NTFS? I am used to booting with a win98 bootdisk and formatting in DOS. I
think I've heard somewhere the NTFS file system cannot be seen in DOS?
Anyway, I couldn't see the drive when I tried last night and now I'm
stumped.

I was thinking of using partition magic to change it from NTFS to FAT32 and
then it probably would work but is there a quicker way? I have 3 drives
that I want to clean off the total drive and give away because I don't want
any info on the drive. One is a generic drive from a Gateway machine and
the other 2 are Western Digital.

Could anyone help me?

TIA for your help........... katy
Click to expand...
Couldn't be simpler: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/
 
Katy said:
Hi All, could someone tell me how I can format (wipe off) a drive with
NTFS? I am used to booting with a win98 bootdisk and formatting in DOS.
I think I've heard somewhere the NTFS file system cannot be seen in DOS?
Anyway, I couldn't see the drive when I tried last night and now I'm
stumped.

I was thinking of using partition magic to change it from NTFS to FAT32
and then it probably would work but is there a quicker way? I have 3
drives that I want to clean off the total drive and give away because I
don't want any info on the drive. One is a generic drive from a Gateway
machine and the other 2 are Western Digital.

Could anyone help me?

TIA for your help........... katy
Click to expand...
You might want to give the following a try.

Eraser is nice for most things. It has quite a few options and even refers
to Darik's Boot and Nuke for heavy trashing. You can find it at:
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/default.php

Darik's Boot and Nuke (every drive on a computer at one time so watch it)
would be my choice for most machines that need to be cleaned. I like that
you can power down and boot up using the created disk so that nothing
remains in memory prior to it starting up and wiping things out. It can be
found at http://dban.sourceforge.net/

And best of all both are free for personal use.
 
GlowingBlueMist said:
You might want to give the following a try.

Eraser is nice for most things. It has quite a few options and even
refers
to Darik's Boot and Nuke for heavy trashing. You can find it at:
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/default.php

Darik's Boot and Nuke (every drive on a computer at one time so watch it)
would be my choice for most machines that need to be cleaned. I like
that
you can power down and boot up using the created disk so that nothing
remains in memory prior to it starting up and wiping things out. It can
be
found at http://dban.sourceforge.net/

And best of all both are free for personal use.
Click to expand...
 
Katy said:
Hi All, could someone tell me how I can format (wipe off) a drive with
NTFS? I am used to booting with a win98 bootdisk and formatting in DOS. I
think I've heard somewhere the NTFS file system cannot be seen in DOS?
Anyway, I couldn't see the drive when I tried last night and now I'm
stumped.
Click to expand...
I installed Win98 after deleted that tremendous WinXP. I inserted
Win98's CD in the drive, and selected "format" option, it taked about
two hours with a 80Gb...
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X-No-Archive: yes

I installed Win98 after deleted that tremendous WinXP. I inserted
Win98's CD in the drive, and selected "format" option, it taked about
two hours with a 80Gb...
Click to expand...

Why waste your time, if you are very sure your hard disk has no bad
sectors. You an use Ranish's Part.exe to do a format without
verification. Even if you use Part.exe to verify, it is certainly much
faster.

http://www.ranish.com/part/

But be advised that Part.exe is not for the novice - RTFM first.

HTH

--
Sandy Archer
Reply to newsgroup only

For links to Harddisk management freeware
http:/members.tripod.com/~diligent/harddisk.htm
 
Hi..
I was in the same problem that you are talking about and looking ahead for wipe ntfs drive tool because I wanted to sell my laptop, but before I wanted to remove all confidential file from my system beyond recovery. One of my friend suggested me a tool that really works that is Wipe Disk software.You can wipe your ntfs drive by utilizing this tool. It is proficient to wipe out all data from ntfs drive.You can download this tool from the link provided below.

Website:-"http://www.wipedisk.net/ntfs-drive.html"
download:-"http://www.wipedisk.net/download/wipedisk-drive-wipe.exe"
 
Hi..
I was in the same problem that you are talking about and looking
ahead for wipe ntfs drive tool because I wanted to sell my laptop,
but before I wanted to remove all confidential file from my system
beyond recovery. One of my friend suggested me a tool that really
works that is <..........>. You can wipe your ntfs drive
by utilizing this tool. It is proficient to wipe out all data
from ntfs drive. You can download this tool from the link
provided below.
Click to expand...

The thread you're replying to is seven years old, and
yet the free DBAN continues to be able to erase
disks. There's no need for commercial tools.

You also have the option of overwriting a partition
with "dd", which is also free.

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition4

If you had three disks, that would be erasing the third disk,
and erasing the fourth partition (as listed in the partition table).
That particular command would not harm the other partitions.
The extent of the erasure is controlled by the information
in the MBR (Sector 0) of the disk.

And if the "all zeros" pattern is not sufficient, the
"dd" program also has a /dev/random option, for writing
random data over the area defined as a partition.

So there's really no need of commercial software at all.
It's covered. Either tool can give you an erasure option.

If you feel nervous doing a single pass erasure, three
passes of /dev/random should do it.

The "dd" program is also available on just about any
Linux LiveCD, and by running the LiveCD, you can even erase
C: on the PC.

One advantage of DBAN, is the ability to erase all the
drives (in parallel) in a computer at the same time.
Which reduces the wait time for the job to finish.

Paul
 
Hi All, could someone tell me how I can format (wipe off) a drive with
NTFS? I am used to booting with a win98 bootdisk and formatting in DOS. I
think I've heard somewhere the NTFS file system cannot be seen in DOS?
Anyway, I couldn't see the drive when I tried last night and now I'm
stumped.

I was thinking of using partition magic to change it from NTFS to FAT32 and
then it probably would work but is there a quicker way? I have 3 drives
that I want to clean off the total drive and give away because I don't want
any info on the drive. One is a generic drive from a Gateway machine and
the other 2 are Western Digital.

Could anyone help me?

TIA for your help........... katy
Click to expand...

Currently AOMEI Partition Assistant home edition is a freeware and can wipe the drive under windows, anyone needed can refer to this tutorial: http://www.disk-partition.com/help/wipe-data.html
 
Hi..
I was in the same problem that you are talking about and looking ahead for wipe ntfs drive tool because I wanted to sell my laptop, but before I wanted to remove all confidential file from my system beyond recovery. One of my friend suggested me a tool that really works that is Wipe Disk software. You can wipe your ntfs drive by utilizing this tool. It is proficient to wipe out all data from ntfs drive.You can download this tool from the link provided below.

Website:-"http://www.wipedisk.net/ntfs-drive.html"
download:-"http://www.wipedisk.net/download/wipedisk-drive-wipe.exe"
Click to expand...

ccleaner also wipes disks with its drive wiper feature.

It has various options from 'free space only to 'entire drive', from
'simple overwrite' up to 'very complex overwrite', 1 pass, 3 pass, 7
pass, 35 pass,

The only downside is that it takes many hours to wipe a drive. I doubt
there is any quicker way to thoroughly wipe a disk though.
 
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