I want to completely wipe a drive

Post by **Sylvus** » August 8, 2006, 1:02 am

Long story short, I accidentally started installing Windows XP MCE from inside of Windows XP, some install files got copied to one of my partitions, and now I can't delete that partition.

I have no floppy drive.

I'm not 100% certain that there aren't all kinds of virii and whatnot on said computer, I would be happy to completely wipe the drive at the lowest possible level, boot records and whatever else I might be referring to incorrectly at this time.

I have no floppy drive.

Can anyone provide me the proper steps to accomplish what I'd like to accomplish, keeping in mind that I lack the ability to create your traditional bootable floppy? I have access to as many burned CDs as necessary and a USB Key that I can go nuts with. The computer in question has the ability to boot from CD and/or USB.

The route I was thinking of trying to go (after reading various google links) was to get something bootable, get delpart.exe on it, and delete my partitions from there, but for whatever reason the links I try aren't getting me a bootable USB Key. When it tries to boot from the key, it just gives me an "Error Loading OS" message.

Hook a brother up.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » August 8, 2006, 1:43 am

Get Disk 1 of any recent linux distro and boot from that? About 2 minutes into the install it will wipe your partitions for you.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » August 8, 2006, 8:16 am

Yeah that should work fine. I've done that in the past

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » August 8, 2006, 10:17 am

Pop in and boot from any windows CD. You can delete and create partitions from the Windows install process.

Al · Post by Al » August 8, 2006, 10:27 am

It may be getting a bit in depth, and I'm not even sure if it can still be done, but I know an industrial strength rare earth magnet used to do wonders on cleaning any sort of rewriteable disk. It may cause more problems (read: you may or may not be able to use the drive again), as I've never done it, but someone else may know for sure. I do know the old floppy disks could be wiped with a magnet then just reformatted and they would work fine.

edit: On second thought, I would forget you read this. It's probably not a good idea unless the FBI is knocking on the door asking about all that kiddie porn.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » August 8, 2006, 11:15 am

Modern hard drives can't be reformatted after they've been degaussed, unless they're factory refurbished.

Post by **Sylvus** » August 8, 2006, 11:16 am

Animalor wrote:Pop in and boot from any windows CD. You can delete and create partitions from the Windows install process.

Unless you've started the install process and it copied some of the install files to said partition, then there appears to be no way to delete the partition the files were copied to from the Windows install process.

That's what I had hoped to be able to do.

I guess I'll probably try a Linux distro and use disk druid (or whatever the current flavor of that is).

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » August 8, 2006, 11:21 am

You probably could boot into the Windows Recovery Console. Pretty sure that has fdisk.

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » August 8, 2006, 3:55 pm

Or you can try removing the windows folder entirely from a utility like Winternals or BartPE.

cadalano · Post by **cadalano** » August 8, 2006, 4:46 pm

BartPE fuckin rocks, its good to have it around anyway.

But you should be able to use the windows recovery console, it would be simpler

Aardor · Post by **Aardor** » August 8, 2006, 6:47 pm

bootable cdrom secure wipe application:

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

There are a ton of similar products around, I just happen to have used this one.

Post by **Sylvus** » August 9, 2006, 11:31 am

Aardor wrote:bootable cdrom secure wipe application:

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

There are a ton of similar products around, I just happen to have used this one.

That did a great job, thanks!