Format Hard Drive without installing windows?

PieIsAwesomePieIsAwesome Ontario, CA
edited March 2007 in Science & Tech
How would I go about doing this? I'm sending the system to someone, and want to give them a clean, formatted drive, keeping my copy of XP.

I have partition magic, and it has an option to format the drive...but I'm afraid to do that seeing how partition magic is installed in XP, in the hard drive I plan to format...

EDIT-Oh wait, how silly of me, the bit of data that the XP CD installs after the format that is used to continue the XP installation should probably work for another guy to continue the installation with his own disk...right?
I guess I'll do that now, delete this is if I'm right, or say something if I there was a better or different way for future reference.

Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    I used to format hard drives using the Windows 98 installation CD. Come to think of it, I've never used the WinXP CD just to format a drive. I think it would work, but there might be problems for your friend when he tries to continue the installation if his version of WindowsXP is not the same: ie OEM vs. retail, Home vs. Pro. Sorry, I just don't know what Windows puts on the hard drive at the time of formatting or shortly after.

    Do you have another computer or an external drive that you could put the subject hard drive in? (Are you buying new equipment to replace your machine after it's gone?) Then you could just use Windows Disk Management to format it. Maybe a friend of yours has an external drive enclosure connected to his machine? Use his system to format the drive.
  • PieIsAwesomePieIsAwesome Ontario, CA
    edited March 2007
    I'm using a laptop. :confused:

    And now my XP disc felt like dying , so it doesn't seem like I can use that anymore...

    The person I'm giving it to lives several states away though.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    www.killdisk.com
  • PieIsAwesomePieIsAwesome Ontario, CA
    edited March 2007
    primesuspect wrote:
    www.killdisk.com
    Coo, I used that to erase everything. I'll let the other guy worry about formatting it, and give him something for the trouble...
  • EqwatzEqwatz
    edited March 2007
    Yes, you can use the install media to format and empty a drive. After you delete the partition--while in the installation shell, exit the install media. Then on reboot, you create a new partition and format it--then exit before install. Of course the easiest way to format a windows partition is to boot to the "recovery console" built into the cd. Then, all you do is: >:\windows cd .. ; format c: [do a format /? to check the available choices and how to use them.]

    As you have found, there are many different ways to do it.
    One of the nicest things to have around is the self-booting gparted cd. You can download the iso and burn it. This will let you resize or delete ntfs partitions, and do many other things. The only codicil is that before you use the software to resize the windows partition (in the case of a system you wish to continue to use,) set the chkdsk program to scan the disk before shutting down--then boot the gparted CD and resize the disk. When you boot windows, it will correct the NTFS before running windows. It is a real good idea to do this trick when doing any resizing of a partition regardless of the program that you use to do it.

    gparted is not the same as "gpart"--a program that will guess the partitions if your partition table gets thrashed somehow (another nice program to have about; it is found on R.I.P and knoppix.) "gpart" is one of the programs which make it necessary to low-level format a hard drive to prevent someone from hacking information out of a "clean" hard drive.

    If you play around on Linux, you will find that a forensics resistant means of nuking infomation on a drive is done using the shred program; or writing binary zeroes, then binary "ones" to the drive using "dd".

    Eqwatz
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