Thread: Hard drive wipe out....

  1. #1
    Novice Programmer Pyroteh's Avatar
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    Hard drive wipe out....

    how can I wipe out my hard drive without logging on to the computer...

    I'm running windows XP professional
    Last edited by Pyroteh; 01-13-2005 at 10:51 PM. Reason: spelling

  2. #2
    'AlHamdulillah
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    wipe out? I presume you mean format...

    Get your installation disk, and when it boots up, either go into repair mode or install and then just format the harddrive partitions as you see fit.
    there used to be something here, but not anymore

  3. #3
    Novice Programmer Pyroteh's Avatar
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    ohh... ok... I'll try that

    thanks...

  4. #4
    5|-|1+|-|34|) ober's Avatar
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    Either that or get a win98 floppy boot disk and use the format program.

  5. #5
    'AlHamdulillah
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    However, Ober, I was under the impression that since he probably is using NTFS, that you could not format a partition into NTFS via the Win98 boot disk?
    there used to be something here, but not anymore

  6. #6
    5|-|1+|-|34|) ober's Avatar
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    You can't. But it would wipe the drive. And I personally trust that method over the WinXP format portion of the WinXP setup. But that's just me.

    But you are right. You'd have to format it again with the setup utility.

    Also, keep in mind that WinXP does not HAVE to be formatted to NTFS. It's a good idea, but not absolutely necessary.

  7. #7
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    if you want to COMPLETELY erase everything, get a linux which boots from a floppy or cdrom and use

    prompt>dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hda

    which makes /dev/hda == 0
    i seem to have GCC 3.3.4
    But how do i start it?
    I dont have a menu for it or anything.

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