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Clearing hard drives

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Name: Dell boy D630
Date: October 17, 2009 at 08:28:05 Pacific
OS: Windows XP
Subcategory: General
Comment:

Hi, i have an old Time computer dating from circa 1998 and it has come to the time to say goodbye to it, i want to salvage a few bits from it, such as the hard drive, ram and 3DFX voodoo 2 card. i want to know how i clear the hard drive, do i need special software? or do i just go in and delete everything?



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Response Number 1
Name: jam
Date: October 17, 2009 at 08:41:54 Pacific
Reply:

That hardware is gonna be pretty much useless in this day & age, unless you wanna build another retro circa 98 computer with it?

There are numerous ways to wipe the drive...manufacturer's software, Windows boot floppy, etc. Which OS are you running on it now? If it's XP, just boot off the XP disc, wipe out the partitioning, create a new partition, then reformat


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Response Number 2
Name: Dell boy D630
Date: October 17, 2009 at 08:44:02 Pacific
Reply:

ok... prob is i dont have a WinME disk anymore...


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Response Number 3
Name: jam
Date: October 17, 2009 at 08:44:55 Pacific
Reply:

Changed my reply above, but you can download the file to create a boot floppy from this site:

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm


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Response Number 4
Name: Dell boy D630
Date: October 17, 2009 at 09:01:03 Pacific
Reply:

Ah thank you very much, iv got it now :D many thanks for your help.


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Response Number 5
Name: T-R-A
Date: October 17, 2009 at 10:21:24 Pacific
Reply:

FWIW, you may be able to salvage it for a Linux box.


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Response Number 6
Name: DAVEINCAPS
Date: October 17, 2009 at 12:55:21 Pacific
Reply:

You can also use a 98 bootdisk since the partition type is the same. Boot up with the disk you create, run FDISK, Y to large disk support if asked, then option 3 to delete the partition(s).


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Response Number 7
Name: olddemdike
Date: October 17, 2009 at 16:38:13 Pacific
Reply:

If you want to remove all traces of data use a program called "Dariks Boot and Nuke"
You download this as an ISO, and burn it to a CD
The boot the machine with the disk and follow the onscreen prompts to wipe the disk
read teh isntructions at http://www.dban.org/ first


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Response Number 8
Name: jefro
Date: October 19, 2009 at 13:51:51 Pacific
Reply:

Any format or delete from floppy would work. Plenty of boot floppies out there.

DSL linux and see how to load hard drive to devzero a few times if you need more secure. I kind of doubt it.

Playing to the angels
Les Paul (1915-2009)


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