Member Avatar for garthparties

Hi All,

I have posted here before and everyone was very helpful with getting me through a wireless networking problem. Now, I am hoping someone can be as helpful with a question I have about a hard drive.

I recently got a new computer. As such, I was going to donate my old one to a local school. However, I want to make sure that all of my data is COMPLETELY removed off of the hard drive. I was wondering the best way to go about doing this. The computer is an HP, running XP SP3 with a Fujitsu HD.

I have the XP restore disc, should I simply reformat the drive? Will this eliminate all of the data? I have also downloaded a utility from the Fujitsu website called fjerase. This program seems like it will do the trick. However, it needs to be "booted from a clean DOS disc." I don't know what this means.

Should I just reformat the HD? Should I use fjerase? If so, how do I boot it from a clean DOS disc? Is there another, better way to do this?

Thanks!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by hughv

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Member Avatar for hughv

Format is fine for most cases, unless you have nuclear secrets or the formula for coke.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Format is fine for most cases, unless you have nuclear secrets or the formula for coke.

Format isnt fine. You can unformat very very easialy. Correct method is e.g. to write all zeroes, then random data, then zero it out again.

However, I want to make sure that all of my data is COMPLETELY removed off of the hard drive.

no way to be entirely sure without physically destroying the drive due to magnetic memory.

This is the best method to use to wipe a drive. I use it myself. Personally reccomend the DoD wipe mode.

http://www.killdisk.com/

Member Avatar for garthparties

Thanks for the heads up. Does killdisk need to be run from a DOS disc too? I would still prefer to use the Fujitsu provided utility, though. Can you help me boot the program? These are the instructions:

1. Boot from a clean DOS disk.
2. Change to the drive/directory where FJERASE.EXE is located.
3. At the DOS prompt, type FJERASE to execute the program.


I don't really know what that means. Can you help?

Thanks!

Member Avatar for hughv

So you do have nuclear secrets?
If your data is that important or likely to start a world war or land you in jail, the only safe thing is to destroy the drive.
A full format is just fine in the vast majority of cases. There's just too much paranoia about this subject.

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