i recently obtained a hard drive with... lets just say a lot of extraneous information from someone else that i don't ever want. A friend of mine showed me a program to wipe the entire disk with so it would be like brand new. I fully understand the workings of wiping a disk, i just need to know about after i wipe it. I'm going to install windows XP SP2 onto it, and i need to know basically how a computer reacts when it has no OS on it. Do i need some sort of boot disk, or once it's wiped can i just stick the Windows install disk in their and install the OS. I mean i've done reinstalls and repair installs before, but I've never actually had a computer without an OS on it. I wasn't sure if it would recognize my DVD drive or if there were other possible complications/warnings/tips etc. that i would need to know.

your help, as always, is appreciated.

thank you, peace.

If your BIOS setup includes your cd/dvd rom as a boot device it will boot from the windows disk and start the install.

If your bios does not support booting from cd you can download files from microsoft to create a set of bootable floppy disks.

sweet
i that's all i was looking for

thanks very much

i'll post if i run into anything else along the way

peace

ok, thought of something

i was considering multiple partitions, but i'm not really sure if i need them/have the space.

right now i have two partitions, one FAT that's about 32MB and then my main NTFS C: that's got everything.

Honestly, i didn't even know i had that little partition so i'm not even sure what's on it.

This drive only has 60GB storage on it, so i don't really know if multiple partitions is even necessary, but after the wipe, what should i do about that small FAT?

A single ntfs partition is fine. That small partition isn't necessary.

you should be able to delete that 32MB partiton when you are in the setup screen, just read it and follow the the steps.

Instead of wiping the disk you can delete all the partitions on the disk, then you can partion the disk to what ever size you want, format it and then install windows. all this can be done from the install disk and what ever was on it before will now be gone and you will have a fresh install of windows. all you have to do is just read it it will walk you through all the steps.

oh i know =]
like i said, i've done reinstalls before, just never full wipes
this time... a full wipe is kind of more like a requirement.

thank you though for you patience, help, and willingness
peace

peace

you seem to be on the right track but to shed some more light a wipe is just like a format. the mania difference is the setting you can use in a wipe, you have to option to wipe the disk as if it was never used before or write zeros to the entire disk. in a wipe data is virtually unrecoverable. in a format you can get back data.

oh i know... i specifically set up a wiping disk because i want all of the data, no matter where it is on the disk, to be as unrecoverable as possible and I am required to make the data as unrecoverable as possible. I would normally on my other computers simply format for the sake of time and what not.