Resolved Format problem

Trying to format the HDD on an old PC before I trash it. How do I get a dos prompt before entering Windows? Running W10 on a home-grown PC.

 

1. Click the Start button and select Run.
2. Enter "cmd" and then press the "Enter" key.
3. In the command prompt window that appears, type "shutdown /r /o" then press the "Enter" key.
4. After your computer restarts you will see the "Advanced Boot Options" menu.
5. Select "Windows Debugging" and then "Command Prompt".
6. Now you can format the hard drive using the "format" command.

 

I plan to donate the PC. It has a lot of good hardware... just a bit outdated. Gonna try Rosie's suggestion.

 

Thanks, I'll try it.

 

If the above solutions don't work for you, I typically prefer to simply attach the target drive to another computer as a secondary drive, and format (or better yet, "wipe") it from there. This can easily be done in an enclosure, a Hard Drive to USB Adapter, or (what I use) a drive docking station.

Warning - you said this is an "old" drive. If very old, it may be an EIDE (PATA) drive instead of the newer and more common SATA drive. If you go with an enclosure, adapter, or docking station and the drive uses the much older EIDE interface, make sure the device supports EIDE.

Alternatively, you could temporarily install this drive (again, as a secondary drive) into another computer, and format (or better yet, "wipe") it from there.

A couple, okay, three FYIs.

1. Formatting (even a "Full" vs "Quick" format) does NOT effectively "wipe" or erase all previously saved data on a hard drive. All it does is prepare each storage location for accepting new data. Formatting will keep an honest person honest as they would have to purposely hunt for previously saved data. A dishonest person would have the necessary tools and know-how to find and recover it. Not hard to do.

A "wipe" program, however, will write a bunch of random "1s" and "0s" to each and every storage location effectively overwriting any previously saved data making it totally unrecoverable. If you have CCleaner, it has a nice "Drive Wiper" function that will wipe the drive for you. One pass is plenty - unless you wear tin-foil hats and are extremely paranoid then three passes will do (but take longer).

2. Before you donate this computer, make sure the intended recipient can actually use it. Otherwise, it will be like you dumping your own useless obsolete electronics trash/junk onto another for them to deal with.

I speak with experience. I used to collect old computer parts and make functional computers out of them to donate to a church. They then donated them to needy families with school children.

However, I had to stop because the schools starting requiring all computers have at least Windows 7 on them (that was a few years ago) and now require all computers have W10 or newer. This was for a couple reasons. First was security. The second was the fact the educational programs they needed to run on these computers did not support older operating systems.

So even though the hardware was still perfectly good (and very expensive when new), it was worthless because it would not support the latest OS - and/or I did not have extra licenses for the latest Windows to donate with the computers.

3. Do NOT burden them with an unauthorized copy of Windows. The donated system MUST have a legitimate license too. If no available Windows license, look into Linux.

So check with the person/organization you plan on giving this to first to make sure they can actually use it, instead of it becoming a burden for them. If they cannot, take the hardware to an electronics recycling center. If you live in the US, Best Buy accepts most old electronics.

 

Rosie's solution did work and it was formatted, however I already knew about the fact that the info is still on the HD. My thought was that after formatting I am planning to pass a strong magnet over the HD thereby scrambling it. I know it's not a perfect solution, but I have confidence that the PCs destination is trustworthy. I know I said 'donating', but actually it is going to a repair/security company that will dismantle it for parts.

 

Nah! That is not likely to help. Hard drives are actually shielded to prevent stray magnetic fields from destroying data stored on the platters.

That used to work fine for floppy disks, but not hard drives. It would have to be a VERY strong magnet you sit on top of the drive and leave there for an extended period of time.

Better to just use a wipe program. As I said above, you can use CCleaner’s Disk Wiper feature to “wipe” a hard disk. Eraser – which uses DBAN technologies is popular too. So is KillDisk. These are all free for non-commercial use.

Another simple way to effectively obliterate the old data is to simply fill the drive with new data. Filling it with songs or video files works and is fairly quick. Fill the drive, do a quick format, then fill the drive again will do it. This is, in effect, the same thing as doing a "wipe", only instead of writing random 1s and 0s, it is harmless tunes and videos.

Saving songs and videos does not ensure each and every storage location has been overwritten, but it darn close and still effective. Even if there is some of the old data left, the file tables will have been cleared and rewritten multiple times. There would be no "map" telling where any file "used" to be on the drive. And surely, any file that used to exist would now have many missing pieces (fragments) and no way to reassemble the remaining fragments in the proper order to make any sense out of what's left of the data. It would be like running a big yellow pages phone book through a decent cross-cut shredder, throwing all the shreds in a big tumbler to thoroughly mix them up. Then burn 3/4 of the shreds and then try to recover what's left.

Even if there was a remote possibility after that of some recoverable data remaining, it would be a very expensive, time consuming process to recover it. No one, except maybe the CIA or FSB would do that and ONLY if they knew you personally and knew for a fact, there was something very valuable on that disk they wanted to get their mitts on.

If you are still really concerned, I say just destroy the drive. Get a good carbine-steel tip drill bit and drill 3 holes through the drive about 3/4 of an inch from the drive motor's center hub. This is how we destroyed drives that previously contained "sensitive data" back in the day when I was still in the military - until we got us a hard drive shredder.