wipe the hard drive?

Question

ive got an old gateway that im going to dispose of, how do i format/wipe the hard drive using keyboard entry commands? its got windows 2000 office as its primary os.

Answer 1

Best thing to do is take it out of the computer an break it up with a hammer.

Answer 2

Go to http://www.download.com and search for and download a file called Killdisk.

Copy the file to a floppy disk. Insert the floppy into the floppy drive and reboot the PC. This will start the Killdisk program. Follow the onscreen prompts/questions.

NOTE: This will erase everything on the hard drive including the Operating System. It rewrites the entire hard drive with 1's or 0's. So once you do this the PC will no longer work until the hard drive is reformated and an operating system is installed. This is a good program if your giving the PC away and don't want to destroy the hard drive. Also be aware that Killdisk runs rather slowly so it may take quite awhile to erase the drive depending on how large the drive is.

Option 2: Take the hard drive out of the PC and drill holes entirely through the drive. What I've seen recommended is about 4 holes at the 12; 3; 6; and 9 o'clock positions (as an example). More holes if you want. This will render the drive useless and unreadable. The only way anything could be gotten off of the drive platters would be at a high tech lab (e.g. FBI) or the like.

Those are the two best methods that I know of.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Go into Dos at the C: prompt type Format.