Quickest way to format a hard drive

Soldato
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I need to format a load of currently NTFS hard drives that are already in PCs. What is the quickest and easiest method?
 
Associate
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I guess you could download a Linux distro, burn it to multiple CD's and use the Partitioner in that. You could also try collect your hard drives together and hook them up to as few computers as possible if that would be easier. Sorry I can't get you a direct link to something... Things like partition magic can make boot disks that should do it for you, but I couldn't find a handy bootable shareware for formatting NTFS...
 
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Associate
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FDISK is my preferred method....You have the option to 'slow format' as well. Kinda defeats the object of formatting the drives 'quickly' but I like to have the option of slowly destroying most of my data.
 
Caporegime
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Normal slow format checks the disk for errors and this is the method I've always used otherwise it can and has caused errors in the filesystem which causes problems in windows and needs to be fixed later with chkdsk. Slow formatting still doesn't delete anything. ;)
 
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Man of Honour
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Do you just want to format or do you want to destroy the data?

For cleansing hard drives I use Webroot's Windows Washer that allows you to create a boot disk that can overwrite the hard disk with a number of algorithms. One option is just to overwrite the boot sector that makes OS's think that the hard disk is blank and that can be done instantly. It isn't secure though and the data will remain. Other options can take several hours depending on how paranoid you are.

Dariks Boor'N'Nuke and Active Killdisk are freeware options but again they take a lonf time. There are other commercial solutions but, apart from a gert big magnet, they all involve overwritting the hard drive and take a long time.
 
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1)Get a desktop hard disk to USB adaptor.
2)Go around each desktop pc with a laptop
3)Connect each desktop pc to the laptop by USB
4)"Format d: /q" (or whatever drive it is)
5) Move to next desktop
 
Soldato
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Thanks guys, in the end I found the killdisk utility. Did a 20gb drive in 10 mins.

It was for a batch of PCs that were being shipped to Africa and I wanted to clear everything from the drives before they went.
 
Soldato
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masterluke said:
1)Get a desktop hard disk to USB adaptor.
2)Go around each desktop pc with a laptop
3)Connect each desktop pc to the laptop by USB
4)"Format d: /q" (or whatever drive it is)
5) Move to next desktop
Geez - that's a lot of effort! Just boot the pc with something as boring as a win98 boot disk, type format C: /q. Achieves exactly the same with far less effort.
 
Man of Honour
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csmager said:
Geez - that's a lot of effort! Just boot the pc with something as boring as a win98 boot disk, type format C: /q. Achieves exactly the same with far less effort.
The data will still be there though. ;)
 
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