How to wipe out the hard drive?

Question

I am giving my old comp away and forgot what keys to hit to wipe out the hard drive. Star something?, can't remember. I had windows millenium on it. GOD, that was aweful.

Answer 1

Open a DOS prompt (go to Run, type in CMD)

At the C:\ prompt, type FORMAT C:\

Boom, everything's gone.

Answer 2

I know that if you use your emergency restore CD, you'll wipe out the hard drive. So if you have the original CD that came with the computer, that should do it.

Just remember that even wiping out the hard drive like that still leaves little bits of information; if you give it to the wrong person or if it eventually gets to the wrong person, they might be able to pull up enough info to make a problem for you.

I know that Best Buy has a service where they pull all your "pertinent" info off (I dont' know how they do it), but it might be worth it, depending on the price. I don't think I'd give my comp away without letting a pro do it. Good luck.

Answer 3

Put the startup diskette into the floppy drive, and once it finishes loading, type "fdisk" (without the quotes). Then, inside of fdisk, delete the partition, and once it's deleted, make a new one, and make sure to enable LBA. Once that's done, reboot, and let it load from the floppy again, then type this "format C:\ -s", without the quotes. That will format the drive, and install the system files at the same time. Then, if you're going to install Windows again, it's ready for it.

edit: And if you forget to type "format C:\ -s" when you format the drive, you can add the system files later, by typing this: "sys C:\". (But it's really best to do it all at once, with the -s option).

Answer 4

Yoy can either use the install disk for Win2000 or XP to "format the drive" ( wipe it clean ) ( it will format it in NTFS ) or you could use "fdisk " command in DOS which would wipe the drive without formatting it by removing all partitions. or you could use the Win98 start up disk , boot from it ant format. " A:> format c:" (will format in FAT32)or something similar with what ever god forsaken Millenium equivalent there is. or you could use "The ultimate boot disk" ( google search for this) and do a military level 10 times binary overwrite.

Answer 5

Your computer probably brought a few CDs that would help with this.
Look for any discs that came with it, most (if not all) computers bring a disc that will wipe everything out and restore factory settings.
It's a real pain to put everything back, but if you must.

If you don't have the discs, use the method of formatting the C drive.

Answer 6

You can format the computer, but if you dont have a Windows installation CD, then you will just have a box.

If you absolutely dont care and just want a box with no windows on it, then just start up in DOS mode and type format c: and hit enter.

Thats assuming c is your local hard drive.

Answer 7

If you can boot into DOS mode with your ME cd then type Fdisk. Delete the partitions. Then created new partitions, reboot and format the hard drive. Be aware that even doing this and formating, people can get in and find old files and restore them if they really wanted too bad enough.

Answer 8

The cost of replacing the hard drive is so cheap these days it anit worth the risk you can buy a new one on ebay for 30 to 40 bucks and be safe

Answer 9

Open dos prompt or open run and type cmd. then type the following command,
format c:
and then press enter, it will then ask u in y or n, just press y and press enter again. it will format ur c drive , if u have many drives like c,d,e,f u can format all of them by the format command one by one e.g
format c:
format d:
format e:
foramt f:
Remember one thing u cannot format ur c drive directly from windows, for this u will have to boot from win98 disk and then format ur c drive.if u dont know how to boot from win98 disk email me, i will send u the detail.

Answer 10

Go looking on the 'net. There are free programs just for this that will do the erasure to military standards and beyond. I can't think of any off hand but they do the job - no hope of recovering ANY data. Put the program on a floppy, set your computer so it boots from the floppy - Goodybye EVERYTHING.
What you refer to - *something - just deletes the data. It's recoverable.
Hope that helps

Answer 11

If you only reformat your drive the files on it can still be easily recovered. There are a lot of free programs on the net that will do this. What you want to do is write over the disk. A good free program for doing this is Kill Disk.