Wiping a hard drive

[NotDeadYet]

Hi Folks,

I bought a laptop cheap from E-Bay and I'm now finding out why it was cheap, it was set up by a knob. I want to start again with a clean hard drive which is reasonably straightforward but the HDD has been partitioned.

How do I get rid of it? I want to go back to a clean disk, no OS, no partitions.

It's currently got Windows 2000 installed, both partitions are NTFS.

Cheers,

Stuart

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by NotDeadYet

Hi Folks,

I bought a laptop cheap from E-Bay and I'm now finding out why it was cheap, it was set up by a knob. I want to start again with a clean hard drive which is reasonably straightforward but the HDD has been partitioned.

How do I get rid of it? I want to go back to a clean disk, no OS, no partitions.

It's currently got Windows 2000 installed, both partitions are NTFS.

Cheers,

Stuart

If he was a real knob, I wonder what personal info he left on it...

If you got a CD to install from, you should be able to install from new, re-formatting on the way.

Adrian

[Harlequin]

To delete the partitions you'll need to run FDISK

Alternatively, slap in the Win XP CD, boot from CD-ROM (option usually available in BIOS) and delete the partitions and start from scratch.

[Sean]

yep if you want to install XP you can remove all partitions during the install then format to NTFS. But it is good practice to have a partition make the C drive (depending on the size of the HDD) enough to hold the operating system plus any programs you want, then have a D drive to hold all the crap that way if the operating system screws up you don't loose all you data as all the good stuff you want to keep is on the D drive. I've got 3 partitions on mine one PGP encrypted

Sean

[NotDeadYet]

It's Win2000 not XP. I've already tried re-installing it, it didn't give me the option of reformatting the disk as it did when I installed it on my PC.

He didn't leave any personal info, just set it up really badly, I was hoping for some good porn

I really only bought it so I could play on the internet while sat on my arse watching the telly so I'm not bothered about backing up any data as I'm not planning on having any on it! Well, apart from any porn I encounter...

[Steve S]

Originally Posted by NotDeadYet

I was hoping for some good porn

well why didn't you say, I know somebody, that knows somebody who's window cleaner has a friend who can get some

Safe diving,
Steve

[Janos]

Originally Posted by Steve S

well why didn't you say, I know somebody, that knows somebody who's window cleaner has a friend who can get some

Surely you know Digger and Wox better than that!

Janos

[Foggy]

Ah simple...

to remove the partitions and also reformat the hard drive....

use a club hammer - works every time

Fancy calling it hard... it just gives up at the first sign of a fight, it should try going around Glasgow in a drunken stupor in the early hours on a weekend! now that's hard!

Cheers, Paul

[Garf]

failing all the above just use a windows 98SE boot disk (must be SE to have CDsupport). there's one here...http://www.msu-hb.de/download/boot98se.exe

USe the app in the link I gave you to create a bootable floppy disk. Then boot to it. Use FDISK to scrap and format the partitions (its on the boot disk), and, then load whatever copy of windows you have available.

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Garf

failing all the above just use a windows 98SE boot disk (must be SE to have CDsupport). there's one here...http://www.msu-hb.de/download/boot98se.exe

USe the app in the link I gave you to create a bootable floppy disk. Then boot to it. Use FDISK to scrap and format the partitions (its on the boot disk), and, then load whatever copy of windows you have available.

Beat me to it