Cleaning HD

Hi I have just built a new com and have sold my old beast to a friend and installed a new 30 Gig HD for them. That leaves me with a 60 Gig that I have taken from it and would like to clean it entirely then use it for a secondary in my new thus making two 60 Gigs. I unwisely installed the new HD on new com with OS which doesn't leave me with a clean one. The old HD has XP Pro installed and reading the posts on formatting it appears on booting from cd to format the XP it will reinstall with the old mobo settings which is not what I want as I won't be able to use it in the new one, I haven't handed the old one on yet which will allow me to format it (am I making sense?) is there a way I can totally wipe the old HD including Mobo settings which would allow me to install it to my new com. as a secondary Drive???

[New Com.]

Asrock K7VM2 socket A
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
HD 60Gig??
256DDR (to go to 512 shortly)

 

yep....un-plug every HD but the one you want to format. (just to make sure you format the right drive)
Use a dos boot disk (add format.com file) and the only drive connected is the one you want to wipe clean.
A:\type format C:
then yes and your off and running

Or use software from the HD company.

 

Or just put a REAL BIG magnet on top of it. j/k Beast steered you right.

 

Thanks Beast, Question for Tater. have an 20 Gig HD that has become corrupt with Norton Ghost Writer which is preventing me from formatting. It even prevents the OEM restore disc from operating and I have tried every way but which way to format it and NGR blocks it each time. As its an old version Norton are unable to help, you mentioned about a Strong magnet, could you please inform me on how to tackle it, and should it be an electric one???? also tried to copy data from one HD to another using XP transfer wizard but it got stuck after 5 hours. I used a serial port transfer cable, I believe there is a way using IDE channels could you please inform as the posting I read member did not respond when you offered help on this. Thanks.

'Peace In The World Or The World In Peices'

 

This may help:

http://www.ontrack.com/hardwareinfo/fdisk.asp

Try the format /mbr option - it may get through NGR?