Hard Drive Wiping & Windows XP

Some time back I started to wipe a hard drive with DBAN (Darik's Boot-N-Nuke). When I saw how long it would take, I aborted a few minutes after starting the wipe. I then booted off of a Windows XP Home CD to install Windows. The Windows XP CD would not recognize the hard drive. I then booted off of a floppy disk (FDisk) and partitioned the hard drive. I then booted off of the Windows XP CD and my hard drive was recognized and I continued with the installation of Windows.

What do you think was the reason that Windows would not recognize the hard drive? Is this normal?

The reason I ask is that a person who has a very limited knowledge of PC's wants to (on their own) wipe their hard drive and install Windows XP Home. I plan to give them a copy of TerabyteUnlimited's "CopyWipe". I am a little concerned that the person may get "Stuck" after the wipe and not know what to do.

If the person gets "stuck" because of Windows not recognizing the hard drive what would be the "simplest" thing to have them do to correct the problem?

Thank you.

 

What is the reason to 'wipe'? For security? It is easy to delete all partitions, then create new one(s), and let install do a full format, not a quick format. I don't know why you would have to wipe (fill with 0's) under normal circumstances.

Sul.

 

I use WipeIT CD more commercial tool it has 3 features. WipeIT, FDISK and Format. WipeIT can take on average a few hours to completely remove all the data on the HDD. Once that is down this HDD is ready to be image with a new OS or install the OS. Corp US companies use this so that security data does not leave on old surplus system HDD. Very important that this is done asset tag so.

The software the OP is using I did take a look at that once but to me that's just takes too long to do.

 

The person that I am helping just wants a little more than deleting the partition and/or formatting. I plan to tell the person to do a simple "zero" write to the hard drive. From your experience will Windows XP recognize the hard drive after a "zero" write operation?

Thank you.

 

I've wiped my entire drive, did not format, and used XP Pro SP2 to format and install.

It's very possible if you are just cancelling a full wipe a few minutes into the wipe then you are going to have data on the last section of the drive. Your XP Home might be detecting that data and that might be causing it to not acknowlege your drive. If you're going to run a partial scheduled full wipe you also need to run a "Quick" wipe that focuses on the first and last sections of the drive. It's also known as an MBR wipe. Usually takes about 20~30 seconds. But it's enough to take all the MBR data off the drive and make it recognizaable as "blank" even thought there is data in the body of the drive.

Completely wiping (zeroing) a drive should not have to be a regular thing. It's mostly for people who might want to sell their used drives and want to remove all the data off of it. If all you want to do is reinstall Windows then a quicker MBR wipe, Quick Erase, etc..., is all you need to do, unless you think you might have a grip of rootkits or boot log viruses, or some other nasty malware on your drive, then a fully wipe would be a benefit.

Many HDD manufacturers have software that can wipe and format their own drives. Some even have software that will work on ANY drive (ex. Seagate...I don't like their newer software; their older stuff is good IF you can find it in an archive somewhere. I'll stick with my Western Digital.) You'll have to go to your HDD manufacturer's website to check.

 

I have seen many hdd zero writers. IBM wipe used to be my fave. Problem I started having was with SATA drivers and newer chipsets. Seems the old standby's don't like to work with new hardware. I don't know which one today works.

When I have done this in the past, even with XP, you booted with floppy to dos, ran the wipe. From my experience, when you started to install XP, it found a drive in basically the same state as when you buy a new one. No partitions etc. Install as normal after making a primary partition.

Sul.

 

You and your friends HDD may already have a wiping program built in, if it is newer than 2001, called Secure Erase Function.

You need a software to access the onboard wiping tool though, called HDDErase. If you can't build a bootable cd try UBCD which contains HDDErase.exe.

The Secure Erase Function will erase a HDD at 100gb in 30 min.
The Enhanced Secure Erase Function, if supported by hdd, will wipe 100gb in 1 second.

Con:
Only works with intel CPU's.
(They must've been involved at some point in the development of Secure
Erase.) AMD inside, SOL.

If a clean install is something that you want, this will provide that, putting your HDD in it's out of box state.