Formatting Hard-Drive

.Kencs · 9 May 2008 at 07:55

MY PC has been running quite slow lately and it's doing my head in.

I have done a full destructive recovery and it still seems slow when I load it back up. I have done the recovery from the partition and from the DVDs I made. What else can anyone suggest to get the drive COMPLETELY wiped so it's to a state of a fresh hard drive so I can reload XP back on it?

I want to avoid going out and buying a new Hard Drive as it will just be money spent when not needed.

IF I am going to have to buy a new hard drive, I need this one wiping completely as I do all my online banking on the PC and I saw a programme about a yr ago where some people's details from their Hard Drive ended up on the other side of the world...

Thanks

.Kencs · 9 May 2008 at 12:08

Anyone?

EVILCOSMOS · 9 May 2008 at 12:21

"Darik's boot and nuke" will completely wipe it so that no data can ever be recovered and it's free.

.Kencs · 9 May 2008 at 12:26

EVILCOSMOS said:
"Darik's boot and nuke" will completely wipe it so that no data can ever be recovered and it's free.

How safe and sucure is it?

EVILCOSMOS · 9 May 2008 at 12:40

You can choose to do a DoD 5220-22.M standard 7 pass wipe or even the Gutmann 35 pass Wipe. So I would say it's very secure.

It will wipe any hard drive it can detect, so unplug the drives you don't want wiped.

.Kencs · 9 May 2008 at 13:13

Kewl thanks. It's a 160GB Hard drive so how long will it take to do?

EVILCOSMOS · 9 May 2008 at 13:28

The time it takes will depend on the speed of your hardware and which level of wipe you choose (no more than the DOD 7 pass is really needed), but it will definitely take hours and hours.

.Kencs · 9 May 2008 at 19:40

Right, I've burnt the ISO file onto CD, do I just put it in and boot from CD?

I need to know ROUGHLY how long this will take to do and if I SHOULD see any difference...

EVILCOSMOS · 9 May 2008 at 20:37

Once the CD has loaded type "autonuke" without the quotations and hit enter. ANY drive connected will then be securely wiped. It will take hours - maybe 10? No you wont see any performance increase as all it will do is securely wipe your drive so no data can be recovered.

If you just want to do a quick format before doing a clean install of windows, then use the format option on the xp install disk.

Tomsk · 9 May 2008 at 21:27

If you want to continue using your PC while the HD is being wiped, use eraser.

.Kencs · 10 May 2008 at 12:45

Thanks for your help. It took 4.5 hours. I didn't type anything in, I just pressed enter and then hit F10 to continue, and it was running DoD or something. Looking at buying a new hard drive now, was thinking of being thoughtful and giving my PC to Charity and buy a new one lol....It's the only way the wife would let me buy a brand new PC, oh well, we'll see

EVILCOSMOS · 10 May 2008 at 12:58

.Kencs said:
Thanks for your help. It took 4.5 hours. I didn't type anything in, I just pressed enter and then hit F10 to continue, and it was running DoD or something. Looking at buying a new hard drive now, was thinking of being thoughtful and giving my PC to Charity and buy a new one lol....It's the only way the wife would let me buy a brand new PC, oh well, we'll see

I think the default wipe is DoD Short which will be good enough to have destroyed any personal data.

Have a look at the new WD3200AAKS-00AB30 320GB single platter hard drives or the new samsung f1 320GB if you can find it. Both are meant to be real fast.

dazz25 · 10 May 2008 at 17:27

A format won't really make any differecne to speed (even though a clean install always feels good!)

I would recommend looking at the Samsung F1 drives though.