How can I completely wipe my hard drive?

klutch

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Do it for me.
And I mean completely. I've done lots of the wipes using Windows OS cd's, which I suppose is simply formatting the drive, but I always end up with leftover indexes and 'ghost' files and folders from the previous install.

With school done, its time for a fresh install of Vista; even though my laptop is only a few months old, I think I've already clogged it with crap. I also want to get rid of this goddamn partition that I can't seem to delete; I'm pretty sure the comp came with it, yet its totally empty.



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Cool, that looks like an awesome utility...will it take out Vista with it?
 
What are these files it is leaving on the harddrive?
 
delete the partition and re-create it, then do a clean/quick format
 
If you want to make sure everything's gone, go get these tools:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools
Burn them to a disk, and boot from CD. Then you can '0' the HDD, meaning that it physically writes a 0 to each and every single bit on the disk. It takes awhile, but it works.
 
When I re-install XP, I just delete the C: partition and then remake it.
 
What are these files it is leaving on the harddrive?

That's what I was wondering.

Hidden directories like "System volume information" is part of windows (it houses the shadow volume copy backups - for system restore and the likes)
 
why not ... KILL IT... KILL IT WITH FIRE?

it's strange, I never had that problem after formatting, but AFAIK if it's empty you can merge it with the other drive. if you do this while there's still stuff on there, you'll lose that stuff. Which is what you want.
 
delete the partition and re-create it, then do a clean/quick format



When I re-install XP, I just delete the C: partition and then remake it.

Ya. If you want to reinstall Vista anyway, just choose to delete every partition and create 1 new one.

Probably the easiest and the most pain free method ever.

No need for 3rd party programs.

Have fun, just make sure you dont delete the wrong partition. My mate did that once, didnt end too well.
 
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