Need to completely wipe hard drive.

[Hugger]

I've got a 1Tb. Samsung hard drive with about 100 megabytes of an old OS on it.
Is there a free or inexpensive program I can use to get rid of it?
I tried to format it and it's not happening.
I want the whole HD bare so I can do a clean install on it with no problems.
I'm using Windows7 Pro x64.
Thanks for any help.
Hugger

[raspb3rry]

Option #1
Use DBAN (http://www.dban.org/).
That'll do the trick:-).

Option #2
If you're familar with Linux, you could do the following from a live-cd:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX
This will overwrite your hard drive one time with zeros.
(X should be replaced with the proper letter for the harddrive)

Option #3
Use CopyWipe (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php). It's free as in beer, but not open-source.

1 & 3 are bootable iso-images, just DL, check md5sum and burn to cd.
Beware that proper wiping a hard drive takes a long time - several hours.

[Bob D]

Samsung offers a utility which includes an option:
ERASE HDD : 0-write or low level format
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/Support_HUTIL.html

[Sully]

You can delete the partition(s), then create a new one(s). This will allow it to be written over completely. Unless you have a technical issue or privacy issue, it is the easiest method IMO.

Sul.

[raspb3rry]

-{ Quote: "You can delete the partition(s), then create a new one(s). This will allow it to be written over completely." }-
But wouldn't it be possible to recover data by using something like TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) then? As I understand it, making new partitions will only overwrite the MBR* not the data itself?

*Master Boot Record

[TheKid7]

The Partition Wizard bootable CD has the options to write "zeros" to all hard sectors, write "ones" to all hard drive sectors or both (one after the other).

[Hugger]

-{ Quote: "You can delete the partition(s), then create a new one(s). This will allow it to be written over completely. Unless you have a technical issue or privacy issue, it is the easiest method IMO.

Sul." }-

Hi, Sul.
That worked great. I'm now formatting my 2 new G drives.
How do I make them into 1 G drive?

[Hugger]

Disregard. A re-boot did the trick.
Thanks everybody for your help.
Hugger

[Sully]

-{ Quote: "But wouldn't it be possible to recover data by using something like TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) then? As I understand it, making new partitions will only overwrite the MBR* not the data itself?

*Master Boot Record" }-
Yes, it probably would. However, the question did not ask for a security wipe, so I gave the easiest method I know of that would allow you to "wipe" the disk if all you need to do is re-install, especially considering he could not format it for some reason. Deleting the partitions and then recreating them will force a reformat, which was what I was trying to get to happen because he said it would not format.

Sul.