Re: [Thinkpad] wiping a hard drive purchased on ebay

I agree with the above. If you have a computer with a floppy drive, running
a windows 98 Boot/System disk with FDisk /MBR <enter>, then FDisk to remove
the existing partitions, then FDisk again to replace the partition(s), then
reboot and format will be fine for your own use. There are people who can
recover data from a disc prepared this way, but not easily and not free.

You can also find several programs at www.majorgeeks.com, www.tucows.com,
www.cnet.com, www.pcworld.com and others which will do an adequate job with
a 30 day free trial period.

On 2/23/06, Chris Schumann <chris@idlelion.net> wrote:
>
> Simply running fdisk and deleting all partitions, and replacing the mbr
> with "fdisk /mbr" will make the drive safe and erase all the data.
>
> Other software will make it more difficult or impossible to recover the
> data, but if you just want to use the drive, knowing that it is safe,
> free from viruses and old data, fdisk will do the job just fine.
>
> Chris
>
> clive wrote:
> > I'd be grateful for advice on whether it is possible to completely erase
> all
> > info on a disk purchased on ebay, before using it, and the name of a
> > reliable (cheap as possible) wiper program to do so.
> > Clive
>
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