When I wipe out a hard drive, it either gets run through Active Killdisk for a 1 pass zeroes wipe (I'm too cheap to use the paid version), or at the very least I use an XP boot disk to fully NTFS format the drive, not the quick format, even if it is getting Windows 7 reloaded. The Windows 7 installation disk "format" that takes about 5 seconds is a joke.
1. One pass with zeroes is all you need for 99.9999% of uses, particularly for the purposes of general data annihilation. Tim and I agree on one thing. This is a momentous day. 2. Win7's NTFS format is a completely different animal from the format of old. Current NTFS essentially only needs the partition table to exist and that takes a split second even for massive drives. A full format still doesn't erase anything, however, it just goes through and lays everything out. Very little on the disk is actually changed.
An XP boot disk full NTFS format changes very little on the disk? The data doesn't get overwritten at all? Then what does it do that takes a half hour or more for hard drives of around 320 GB and above?
I enjoy totally destroying virus files with an Active Killdisk zeroes wipe (I always use "kill" mode, not "wipe" mode), but it takes 1-2 hours to do it. And then you have to use an XP boot disk to get some sort of format back on the disk so it can be reloaded with 7. It can be wiped out and then go straight to a 7 boot disk, but I always felt better doing the XP format, even just a quick one, afterwards.
We got hit with a rash of MBR viruses a few years ago. I made sure my team added a step to our automated Windows deployment sequence to erase the MBR on EVERY re-image just for that reason...
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2. Win7's NTFS format is a completely different animal from the format of old. Current NTFS essentially only needs the partition table to exist and that takes a split second even for massive drives. A full format still doesn't erase anything, however, it just goes through and lays everything out. Very little on the disk is actually changed.
I enjoy totally destroying virus files with an Active Killdisk zeroes wipe (I always use "kill" mode, not "wipe" mode), but it takes 1-2 hours to do it. And then you have to use an XP boot disk to get some sort of format back on the disk so it can be reloaded with 7. It can be wiped out and then go straight to a 7 boot disk, but I always felt better doing the XP format, even just a quick one, afterwards.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/69013
Diskpart
List disk
Select disk [some number, hopefully the right one]
Clean
Exit
Exit
You've just eliminated the partition table and MBR. Also fixes GPT.