Is My Hard Drive Empty?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Afairg

Afairg

Commendable
Jan 2, 2017
44
0
1,540
I found an old Hitachi DeskStar 400GB hard drive in a windows vista computer. I'm building a new PC, so I downloaded Dban, burned it to a CD-R, and tried to wipe the hard drive a couple of times. The first one failed, because I didn't have a USB stick to store the logs. The second one didn't say if it failed or succeeded, it just said that dban finished with non-fatal errors and to check the log for more information. I then tried booting on the old hard drive, and it doesn't work, it tells me to plug in a system disk and press enter to continue. Is it safe to assume that the hard drive is empty because it won't boot?
 
Solution
Wolfshadw
Formatting the drive is part of the Windows installation process. When you get to the point where the install asks where you want to install Windows, there should be an "Advanced" option. Clicking that should present you with the option of adding/deleting partitions and formatting them.

-Wolf sends
Sort by date Sort by votes
snurp85

snurp85

Distinguished
May 6, 2009
641
0
19,160
If it no longer recognizes windows, then at the very least the master boot record has been wiped. I personally use Active KillDisk to write zeroes to HDDs, which you could use as well. That said, with the MBR deleted, you can install a new OS and if there was undeleted data, it wont be detected and will be written over.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Afairg

Afairg

Commendable
Jan 2, 2017
44
0
1,540
Thanks for the help. I'm currently doing one last wipe just to make sure. Would I have to format on a different computer since Windows was deleted? I looked up how to do it and it looks like you need a version of Windows to format an HDD
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Wolfshadw

Wolfshadw

Titan
Moderator
Aug 3, 2006
28,229
1,515
133,290
Formatting the drive is part of the Windows installation process. When you get to the point where the install asks where you want to install Windows, there should be an "Advanced" option. Clicking that should present you with the option of adding/deleting partitions and formatting them.

-Wolf sends
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom