Deleting Hardrive

I need to totally blank a 20GHz hard drive and remove the O/S
I,m fixing Dishnetwork 5900 ird. and need to replace the hard drive which
is toast. (electrical storm) Is it possible to bring it to a virgin state.

I just can,t use the PVR any more.

 

One program that will destroy any data on a hard drive is Active KillDisk. But, first things first — Is the drive seen by your computer when connected to it? If it is accessible, it shouldn't take long to blank a 20GB hard drive.

 

I,ll download Active Killdisk first and put that on a memory stick
then disconnect my good drive (just to be safe) hook up the 20Gb
I,ll be in touch when i,m done. thanks.

 

Did not work. Every time I tried to run it it brought me back to winzip.
What can I try next?

 

You need to extract the setup file from the zip archive to disk. Then run the setup file.

 

Any of the partitioning software that Major Geeks is a mirror for has the ability to wipe a drive/partition as well. The 20GB drive you want to erase would have to be connected as a second drive though either through a second connection inside the computer or via USB connection using an enclosure, cloning kit or docking station. Software titles include MiniTool Partition Wizard, EaseUS Partition Master and AOMEI Partition Assistant among others.

I, personally, prefer AOMEI because the bootable CD that can be created is Windows based. MiniTool and EaseUS use Linux for their bootable CDs and because of that, a drive letter can't be assigned to a new partition you may create on a hard drive at some point in the future. Linux uses it's own naming convention like "SDA1" automatically and you can't change it.

 

Personal favorite is Darik's Boot and Nuke (dban).

Burn the .iso to CD, and it's bootable.

 

That used to be my favorite. Then I moved to Eraser – which uses DBAN technologies, but within Windows - so much easier.

Now I use and recommend CCleaner (select CCleaner Slim version for no toolbar option). The Drive Wiper feature will totally wipe (overwrite every storage location with random 1s and 0s) whole drives but it also has the option to only wipe the free disk space - and that is a very handy feature!

 

I've got a bootable CD of DBAN and downloaded Eraser. How could I make a bootable CD with Eraser on it using WAIK? Please be specific with your instructions (if any).

DBAN takes 19 hours and 43 minutes to wipe my 80GB "C" drive with a single pass. Would Eraser be any faster?

 

As I said above, I no longer use Eraser because CCleaner is so much easier. Since you have a bootable CD with DBAN, I would use that if you don't want to use CCleaner. But to that, it seems you could just run Eraser after booting from the CD.

Also, on that Eraser webpage, note on the right under "related articles" you can download the Eraser user manual that does a better (and faster) job of explaining than me. Okay, I'm being lazy but generally you need to "burn" the iso to disk with Nero or similar writing program.

19 hours is a very long time for such a small drive and a single pass. That makes me suspect the drive has other serious issues.

There is another way to "wipe" a drive. Simply delete all the files off it, then fill it up with music or video files. That's the equivalent to a single pass. Delete all again and fill up again and there's pass two. Of course, this assumes the drive is good and you can still read and write to it.

Finally, you can always take a carbide tipped drill bit and drill 3 holes through the hard drive about 1" from the drive's center hub. I have done this many times on corrupt/damaged drives that contained sensitive information.

It is super important we all ensure our old drives do not contain sensitive data or personal information that can be retrieved by badguys. So it is great you are concerned about wiping your old drives. But it should be noted that badguys are mostly lazy opportunist. They commit crimes of opportunity. They go for the easy pickings - low hanging fruit.

Unless your drives contain customer's credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc., you don't need to perform a military grade wipe on your drives. It takes too much time and money to retrieve data from a drive that has been overwritten even once with music files.

 

I agree about the time frame. I had to download and burn DBAN v1.0.7 because DBAN v2.X.X won't run on my Dell Precision M70.

There are NO issues with my WD Scorpio "C" drive except "minor inconsistencies" which chkdsk notices but doesn't seem to be "too concerned" about. I've run short and long tests on the disk as well and it passes those tests.

I simply wanted to get a WAIK .iso with Eraser automatically launching after the Windows mini loads — similar to my AOMEI Partition Assistant bootable CD. The Windows files load and then AOMEI launches.

 

Huh? I would not call that a "NO" issue then. And chkdsk does not rate the issues it fines as concerning or not. If chkdsk finds issues and cannot fix them, that is a problem. If it fixes then and subsequent chkdsk scans come clean, then you can say it is not concerning.

If unsure, run the manufacturer's diagnostics which you download from the maker's site.

 

I ran the Western Digital DataLifeGuard Diagnostic again and the hard drive passed both the Quick test AND the Extended test (see attached).

But that isn't my question. I want to make a bootable CD with only Eraser on it using WAIK. I want the CD to load and start mini Windows and then launch Eraser, just like my AOMEI Partition Assistant CD does with AOMEI Partition Assistant.

 

Okay. Then I would feel comfortable storing my data on that drive.

As for Erasure, I am now sorry I mentioned it. I don't use it anymore because CCleaner's Drive Wiper feature works for me, and I have CCleaner on all my systems. When I need to wipe a drive, I simply plop the drive in my drive docking station and wipe away.

You might ask in the Eraser Forums.

 

I went there. 5 years ago (ticket #96) someone requested a bootable Eraser. The author said he'd work on it when he had the chance. He still hasn't had the chance! :confusedrolleyes

I'll try one of the other secure erase programs like MHDD.

 

Do you have something against CCleaner? I know it works.

 

Many thanks to mdonah and Digerati you guys gave me exelent advice.

I have the 5900 ird fix. My buddy is happier than a pig in S***.
Thanks agian.

 

Absolutely not. I run it (full version) myself on a regular basis. Is there a way to get the slim version on a bootable CD using WAIK so I could then use the drive wiper feature from the bootable CD? I would imagine it would be quite a bit faster than DBAN.

BTW, the only time chkdsk reported minor inconsistencies with my "C" drive was when I was dual booting XP and 8.1 preview. I would choose "Earlier version of Windows" from the boot choices. The computer would restart, chkdsk would run, report the minor inconsistencies and then boot into XP normally.

I see that the OP solved his issue and is quite pleased with both of our recommendations. Thanks for your input on the subject.

 

@ b1jqxk44 - You are welcome.

Second item down: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/builds