Formatting a hard disk. It doesn't clear everything?

Question

Yesterday, I performed a full System Recovery on my computer. The hard disk was formatted and then partitioned into four ''c', 'd', 'j' and 'k'. I began by installing Windows 2000 Pro onto the 'c' Drive followed by Windows XP Pro onto the 'd' Drive and finally Windows Vista onto the 'k' Drive. Today, I performed a full defrag on all three drives using Auslogics Disk Defrag (because unlike the Windows defrag, Auslogics actually displays the files being defragmented). While defragmenting the 'c' Drive (now containing Windows 2000 Pro) I was rather disturbed to see Power Cinema present on the 'c' Drive. You see, Power Cinema had been on the original 'c' Drive with Windows XP (before yesterday's formatting and partitioning). How can this be? A program surviving formatting, partitioning AND the installation of a different OS. I didn't believe such a thing was possible. How do I get rid of defunct programs so they are really gone?

Answer 1

Hello; IF win2k is your primary drive, and it sounds like it is, if you loaded if first, you can use the fdisk command with the "/mbr" switch after it... this wipes the master boot record... when ever you reformat, the mbr stays the same... this will delete the mbr! I don't know if it still works in XP, but I think it does.

I had an advanced copy of Vista; I found it to be a sloppy memory hog... if it wasn't for wifi connectivity, i'd had never left win2000! I'm sticking with xp pro, until they get the bugs outa Vista!

I hope this helped!
Mac

Answer 2

First of all, re-formatting means to delete everything on your hard disk again. To reformat, first you have to put the windows 7 disk into the computer, then turn the computer off. Next turn on the computer, and rapidly tap F12, do this right after you hit the computer's power button. Then the computer should give you some options, choose the option that says boot from cd (or something similar to that). After that, just follow the instructions on the screen.

Answer 3

While it is true that you can sometimes recover some files after formatting, this can only be done using file recovery software.

As the directory was still listed on the drive and did not require recovery you DID NOT format the entire drive as you claim you did.
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Wipe the drive use any of these three:
All data on the drive will be erased.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6142_102-0.html?forumID=5&threadID=194873&messageID=2115918
"You can find out the manufacturer of your HD and then attempt to download the formatting tool created by that manufacturer for their HD's. Most HD Mnufactuer have a Zero Fill Low level formatting tool available to erase their HD products. This will clean any existing OS files from your system as well as any viruses other files etc.."

Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) free
http://www.download.com/Darik-s-Boot-and-Nuke/3000-2092_4-10165154.html
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=61951&package_id=58479&release_id=439240
DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

Active@ Kill Disk - Hard Drive Eraser (Free version/ $29.95 enhanced version)
http://www.killdisk.com/
Active@ KillDisk - Hard Drive Eraser is powerful and compact DOS software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It's a hard drive and partition eraser utility.
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Format and Reinstall Windows

When you format enter "fdisk /mbr" to format the master boot record.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=49909&messageID=593967

Reformat and install. (Cleans drive loses all data)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/winxp/install.mspx
http://www.whitecanyon.com/reformat-the-hard-drive-in-windows-xp.php
http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/l0910/32l10/32l10.asp

Answer 4

As you can now see, the Windows virus--no matter which version you install--does not do much of a job with disk management.
When I want to truly blank a disk, I use either disk tools present in Linux or I run my security erase software which at least overwrites the disk sector by sector rather than just marking the sectors free in the allocation table.

Answer 5

overwrite the drive with ones and zeros-
the manufacturers of the hard drive generally have such programs available for free on their site.
Create a bootable disk or cd
also a program called killdisk has a free version.

After the drive is cleared you can reinstall if you think it is worth the effort of the whole exercise

Answer 6

A high level format just erases the file directory entries, it does not erase any data from the disk.


A low level format would be more effective.

Answer 7

download a disk "wiper" like PGP. That takes the selected files (or dirs) and overwrites with 0's.

Answer 8

lol well in that case you will have to format the drive like 10 to 20 times lol yea i know...one thing to keep in mind even if you format the drive 10 -20 times the infomation in that srive still can be retrived...so thats just a thoguht....

Answer 9

I had same trouble.
best way is to get new hard disk. and copy the required.