about wiping a hard drive

[acuariano]

i bought a dell-dimension[OEM] like 5 years agomy hard drive is a
The Seagate Barracuda (ST380021A) is a 80GB, 7,200 rpm, HHD that features 2MB buffer, 9ms average seek time, and UDMA 66/100 support. It has 350 Gs nonoperating shock, 3D Defense System, and 600,000 hours MTBF.

i always wanted to lean how to wipe ther hard drive and installed a fresh copy of windows..so a friend of mine got me a copy od wipedrive 3.0.2 ..
first time...1 pass took 3 hours and a half ..
second time...3 passes took me like almost 11 hours.

-THE good thing is that before proceeding to wipe down hd ...the system shields one part that i guess it contains the serial number for winxp....after wipedrive finish,,i renstalled winxp..normally,,it doesn't ask me for serial number..
--it goes very smooth....the only thing is that for 3 passes it taks like 11 hours.

I WONDER IF a program like killdisk or dban do the same...
take that long.............and IF IT SHIELDS the part that contains the serial#.etc [i don't know how to name it]..
.........can anybody let me know ...thanks in advance.

[Midknyte]

1. Dell XP cds are bios coded. that's why it doesn't ask for a serial number.

2. with killdisk or dban, you're talking about zero fills. the more passes you take and the larger the hard drive, the longer it will take.

[Sterling_Aug]

If you are reinstalling any OS, then a zero fill wipe is unnecessary. A quick format during the install process is fine.

[acuariano]

ok...thanks for the answer "BIOS CODED"...but,,
killdisk or dban do the same.? or willwipe the "bios coded?
-if i do a wipe is to have a clean hard drive,,

[Midknyte]

killdisk and dban do about the same thing, it's just how thorough you want to wipe the drive. if you're installing windows on the drive, then a plain format is good enough.

The BIOS is on the motherboard, so wiping the drive won't affect that.

[acuariano]

ok thanks,,is just that when running killdisk,,,i did not see the warning message that the "bios coded" will not be touched....
thanks for all the information

[Midknyte]

the "bios coding" has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HARD DRIVE. The Dell XP disc detects if the motherboard is a Dell board, then bypasses the serial number and activation. If you use a NON-DELL XP disc, then it would ask for a serial.

[acuariano]

oh great..that's good to know....great forum...

[acuariano]

what's the unalocated place..what does it mean?
thanks

[Midknyte]

if you mean unallocated space, it just means part of the hard drive that isn't partitioned. a screenshot would help.

[G Ray88]

When you get ready to install your OS check at www.bootdisk.com for some more help. I didn't read all of you first post, I see that you have already install XP.
Good Luck :)