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Hi, recently my hard drive on my laptop started acting up, and Dell sent me a replacement. Dell wants this hard drive back. How can I format this hard drive without installing a new operating system on it? I know you are given an option to format it when you start to install an operating system, but I dont want to install an operating system, I want to just leave it blank. Thanks for the help!
Well if you are on XP you can insert the Windows CD and reformat, then just not install an OS, then give it to Dell, then put in the other HD and install the OS there.
a dangerous way to wipe your harddrive is to run DBAN (Darik’s Boot And Nuke). this file, once loaded on a floppy, is one dangerous tool. after creating the image and loading it on to an empty floppy you can basically erase/wipe every harddrive that is attached to the machine once the floppy (there are CD ROM images available also) boots up. this will surely remove any sensitive information like credit card numbers, passwords, porn, etc. (if someone really really wants to they can recover data no matter how you wipe your harddrive)
the reason why i posted on wiping and not about formatting is because when you format a harddrive you are most likely going to install an operating system on it. that is why most operating system cds come with “built-in” formatting tools. every operating system uses a different harddrive format. you said that you didn’t want to install an operating system and this is why i recommended DBAN.
Well if you want to format; every OS has built in format tools, for example XP, insert the CD, restart your pc, boot your computer with CD, continue on with the setup process, until it asks you ”On which of the drives do you want to install the windows?”
Select the drives, format them or even delete them to remove the partition. Same is the case with Win 2000, same method, same setup process, but if you are using win 98 it’s a bit different, start computer with CD ROM support. DOS prompt appears. Enter the drive letter of your CD ROM drive, such as d: press enter, you will be in cd rom drive, type ‘cd win98‘ (without quotes) hit enter, you will see some thing like this, d:\cd win98>
Now type the format command, for slow format, for example format c: hit enter, if you have other drive to be formated, change the drive letter and the drive will be formated.Orignally posted by user91c
if someone really really wants to they can recover data no matter how you wipe your harddriveIt’s true to some extent, but there is also a way, actually after delete or format of the data, data goes to shadow copy, windows creats the shadow copy of the data, that shadow copy cannot be deleted but it can be replaced, when you copy new data on to the drive the shadow copy is replaced. If you really really wants to reomve all the data that someone cannot recover it, after format just copy new data on to that drive, copy until it’s full and there is no space left, new data such as movies etc.
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