DOS based Zerowriter ??

Rebuilt

Distinguished
Apr 30, 2002
53
0
18,630
Does anyone know of a DOS based utitlity that will write 0's to a partition only, and not the whole hard drive? I use WD drives, and their wipe program takes partitions with it. I want to do a clean install,but do not want to wipe out my other partitons and everything in them. I understand that formatting alone will not wipe the drive of old data. Is formatting enough or should I keep looking for a partition "honoring" dos based wipe program?

A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be. Abe Lincoln
 

elzt

Distinguished
May 10, 2002
1,141
0
19,280
Does your HD contain confidential data that you don't want anyone to retrieve them? If no, then a simple formatting would do for clean installation.
 

Rebuilt

Distinguished
Apr 30, 2002
53
0
18,630
Naw, nothing top secret here. Thanks for the feedback.

A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be. Abe Lincoln
 

nach

Distinguished
Jun 11, 2003
81
0
18,630
Does anyone know of a DOS based utitlity that will write 0's to a partition only, and not the whole hard drive?
I am not sure you will find one that does just a partition, because zero writes occur at sector level and not cluster.

Here is a good site to visit for some of the older animals.

<A HREF="http://www.drivermuseum.com/" target="_new">Jargon's Driver Museum</A>

<A HREF="http://www.drivermuseum.com/files/utils/hd_u.html" target="_new">HD Utilities showcase with low level format Utilities in Jargon's Driver Museum.</A>