Harddrive Nuke thingy...

[Predator33]

Hey, im looking for a program that goes on a cd or floppy that will erase my harddrive entirely, so it's basically brand new. Im planning to do a clean install of windows xp home edition since i'm looking for a fresh start. I know i can google this up, but since this feels like a serious thing, is there anything you guys trust/use that does this? And will this actually work?

[TJHighlndr]

Most HD manufactures sublet another produce their own hard drive software- for example: Maxtor's MaxBlast Software & WD Data Lifeguard

Both the companies I referred to earlier use a propritary (sp) version of Ontrack's Disk Manager. The "retail" version of Disk Manager works on any brand of HD and IMO, is a pretty good program if the software from your HD maker isn't doing what you want it to do. However, it is a little pricey ($60 US)

Good Luck

[Midknyte]

zap:
http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe

[Predator33]

it says that it's not there, and i tried searching on the left and it brought up so many results, could you maybe find it again plz? :)

[ukulele]

I think ZAP was pulled from the servers because of some piggy backed trojan that was found in some copies. At any rate it only removed the MBR not the actual data on the drive. What you want is wipe.exe to zero write the drive. Go here to get that and instructions. (http://forums.winforums.org/showthread.php?t=5195)

Most drive manufactures also have a zero write utility. Just check their support downloads.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Killdisk

--Jakk:t

[crossedup]

try to find the latest manufacturer one first, could save you a lot of headaches. I say this from experience.

I zapped my 160GB HD 2 weeks ago, it turned it into a 131 GB HD. Zapped it again on another machine, same thing. Tried partition magic to get it back and tried an older version of Maxblast, same thing.

Got the newest version of Maxblast and tried that and had the whole 160GB back in about 3 minutes.

Would have saved me a lot of trouble if I had just tried that first. The newest version actually runs from within windows, guess thats what threw me.

[Predator33]

What i have is a Hitachi Deskstar 180GXP. I've tried looking for a zero write utility, and couldnt seem to find one unless i haven't been looking hard enough.
http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/hgst/?epi_menuItemID=f1c52fb2fc0fc00ae4c0c516bac4f0a0&epi_menuID=8d237906f078b6fd25ad4e8060e4f0a0&epi_baseMenuID=22f0deefa8f3967dafa0466460e4f0a0

And i've still been wondering if erasing my harddrive totally and intalling my os again, will it work?

Thx:)

[ukulele]

Will it work for what? Are you trying to get rid of a virus? Zero writing that drive will take a month of sundays. If you just want to reload the OS just repartition and reformat it.

[Predator33]

ok.. i guess i'll just do a system restore, i really wanted it to be almost like a brand new system, since ive system restored earlier because of viruses that couldn't be removed and i wanted a fresh start, but i guess it's ok, thx guys. :)

[crossedup]

If it is actually a restore it just writes over the top of everything and kills the MBR anyway so i wouldnt worry about zeroing it, it will solve nothing.

If it is a reinstall you can format the drive first.

And a month of sundays is a bit long, LOL, that 160GB took about 16 hours and some change though.

[ukulele]

You don't need to zero write a drive unless you have sensitive data on it that you don't want anyone else to find with a recovery utility.