Reformatting the C drive.

[Trumpton]

Prof wrote:

> Have you a floppy drive and a startup disk ready?

My old computer does have a floppy disk drive (A drive). No it doesn't have a startup disk. It did, but I lost it many years ago.

All I'm wanting to do is to delete (wipe) all the information from the C drive.

[Sam Slater]

Google for 'fdisk' and 'startup disk' and you should be able to download the dos files necessary. Then you can put the files on a blank floppy.

[Trumpton]

Prof wrote:

> Google for 'fdisk' and 'startup disk' and you should be able to
> download the dos files necessary. Then you can put the files on
> a blank floppy.

Thanks for that Prof. My old computer has had all it's internet connection facilities removed. My lappy does not have a floppy disk drive.

[Sam Slater]

Can't you download the files onto your laptop and use a usb flash drive? Or use the memory card on a digital camera?

[Trumpton]

Prof wrote:

> Can't you download the files onto your laptop and use a usb
> flash drive? Or use the memory card on a digital camera?

I don't have a flash drive installed. Don't have a digital camera either.

Btw, good afternoon Prof. We haven't "spoke" for a couple of days.

I take an early evening off and on my return I see Maggsey's got himself into a proper lather.

[Sam Slater]

Evening Trumpy. Not posted much in the last few days as I've been catching up with friends etc. As, for magoo: best not to mention him or he'll come gunning for you next !happy!

Regarding formatting your hd, I can only suggest keeping the hd back and let them insert their own. You could use your windows cdrom, but you've no way of completely wiping all your old files off the drive, even with a reformat.

Smash it up with a hammer and boil the bits in acid if security is that essential for ya! !cool!

[Trumpton]

Prof wrote:

> Evening Trumpy. Not posted much in the last few days as I've
> been catching up with friends etc.

Ah, I see.

> As, for magoo: best not to
> mention him or he'll come gunning for you next !happy!

According to what I've just read on another thread, Maggs says that he and I have never had a crossed word.

> Regarding formatting your hd, I can only suggest keeping the hd
> back and let them insert their own.

Someone else did mention that possibility.

> You could use your windows
> cdrom, but you've no way of completely wiping all your old
> files off the drive, even with a reformat.

Bugger!

> Smash it up with a hammer and boil the bits in acid if security
> is that essential for ya! !cool!

As a last resort I might just have to do that. I did that to a mates old computer last year. Those old C drives are much tougher than they look. I was knackerd after destroying it with a lump-hammer!

[sparky]

If you email me I can send you bootable floppy of kill disk and another with fdisk & format. Then you can wipe with Killdisk followed by fdisk & format for the new user.

Like other say data can still be recovered - but unlikely a charity shop buyer would want to invest to do that.

[Trumpton]

Thanks Sparky, but I'm just going to dismantle my old computer and smash up the C drive with a lump-hammer. It's just too risky giving it away to a charity shop - you never know where it's going to end up.

Thanks again for all your help. !thumbsup!

[Sam Slater]

[quote]Those old C drives are much tougher than they look.[/quote]

Trumpy, they're not called 'C Drives' Windows just assigns each drive with a letter upon install, with the floppy drive as the letter A, the primary drive the OS is to be installed on as letter C and the first optical drive as letter D all be default.

They're just letters the OS assigns them.

You have the good old Floppy Drives, the old Tape Drives, Hard Drives, and Optical Drives (cdrom/dvdrom etc). Now we have flash drives as well which will replace hard drives I think as they use less power due to no moving parts (and less failures too, it's assumed).

As for your hard disk that you're thinking of smashing up: PC Format once reformatted a hard drive and found that with the right kit, 95% of the info was still retrievable. Smashing it up with a hammer they still found a way of retrieving 80% of the data, and even after burning it they could get back 30% using the latest kit that forensics use.

Nothing short of melting the fucker down will guarantee complete eradication.