Erasure Tool
 

Does anyone know of tool (preferably free) that will erase everything from your harddrive. Including OS, data, etc. Its time for a free format. Thanks for any info and or help. Thanks

free and powerful!! recommended in maximum pc magazine.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Sure, make a boot disk, pop it in, then

\format c:

:p

Both Maxtor and WD have Data Diagnostic tools that can write 1's & 0's to your drives, essentially do a real "Format" that makes it almost 100% clean.

That is truely the only way, but I'm sure ther are other software items out there that can do it a bit more precisly rahter the entire drive.

I am actually trying to reformat a Maxtor drive. Destrox, would you happen to know where to find those tools. Would it came bundled with the drive or could I download it someplace? Thanks

This is the software that comes with new HDD's.
It has erasing, formating, and partitioning functions.
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/dow.../maxblast3.htm

Unfortunately, Maxblast won't work. I wiped out the CD that came with my drive, installed it but MaxBlast won't let you select the primary (C:) drive to alter or change. Unless, I can find something else I will try mikec's suggestion.

You have to boot to the CD in order to format the C:/ drive;)

format c: does nothing to erase a drive, he(she) wants to wipe it clean removing everything off of it, not just one pass he(she) wants it DEAD.

which means multiple passes with random data writen to it.

personally I'd use partitionmagic to delete and secure erase, but for a free prog I've tested boot & nuke and it worked on the drive I tried it on..

Well, its over and done with. Thanks everyone for your help. I used Mikecs first suggestion (see above). It worked well (even though it took 5 hours. It was a 160 GB drive). Thus, far the driver conflicts with my new 9800 Pro haven't surfaced so I am happy but time will tell. Again, thanks everyone for your help and suggestions.

Sounds like you just did the defaults with dban. There is a quick option which just writes one pass of zeroes, which is much much quicker if you dont mind about data recovery.

cool, glad it worked out for ya! yeah it can take a while, but you can guar-on-tee that whatever data is on there is totally unrecoverable. nice!!