How do I completely wipe out HD, start over?

[philtheskipper]

I'm running windows xp. Have a single SATA hard drive.

I want to completely erase my hard drive. I want to start from scratch and reinstall windows and everything.

How do I erase or format the drive? I tried from the windows environment but it won't do it since the drive is in use.

[ANZAC_ELITE]

Insert XP cd, reboot, set the cd rom to first boot in the bios, click "boot from cd" at the prompt, follow the steps to delete old partition, then create new one. (Please read the instructions carefully)

:Please note this will wipe the drive clean, back up all your important files before doing this:

Read all the prompts carefully during this process, have all the required driver disks on hand.

Reinstall XP and any third party drivers required, apply SP2 before you connect to the net or Blaster worm will get you almost immediately.

[Darthtanion]

While the steps above will accomplish your goals, I would like to point out that this will not erase your drive. If you have sensitive data that you are wanting to be gone from retrieval, you will need to physically wipe the drive.

[PorscheGuy997@yahoo.com]

There is an option in xp to format the drive. For a more secure way, you could install window washer. It has a disk erasing utility were you burn a cd and boot the cd and it will "wash" the drive completely. This is the most secure in my mind.

[Yawgm0th]

Originally Posted by Darthtanion

If you have sensitive data that you are wanting to be gone from retrieval, you will need to physically wipe the drive.

That (and the post below you) just makes them hard to retrieve. If you want to make it impossible, you'll need to melt down the drive or cut it into very small pieces. But for the purposes of this thread, a simple recreation of the partition should do.

[Darthtanion]

Any utility that performs a legitimate "government wipe" will for all practical purposes make the data unretrievable. This is a process of randomly writing 1's and 0's over the entire data area of the disk. The only way to retrieve after this process is to examine the platters microscopically, which is pretty much impossible for normal users. We're talking sophistication levels on par with the NSA... oh, they don't exist, do they? =)

[Yawgm0th]

Originally Posted by Darthtanion

which is pretty much impossible for normal users

Pshh... Who said anything about normal users? :D All the random passes of 1s and 0s in the world won't remove the data entirely, even if there's pretty much no chance someone would want it enough to go to the trouble of getting it back.

[webe3]

What about the program evidence eliminator? They claim to erase the disc so that even government agencies could not retrive the data. Is this true? The program itself is very expensive.

[amd_man2005]

Most HD companies include a low-level format feature that would be good enough to do this. If not look at the website and you should be able to find one. Although, if you do not plan to get rid of the drive, there is no point in lowlevel formatting it unless you have someone else tech savvy in your home that you need to hide something from :)

[CharlesT]

so, is there a lowlevel formatting tool from Runcore available?