Solved Wiping the hard disk clean

[Melita]

I want to install Windows XP Professional on a clean hard disk. I plan to use "Darik's Boot and Nuke"
http://dban.org/ to wipe the disk clean. Is this a good idea?

Regards,

 

[indianacarnie]

Yes.

 

[Melita]

The Hard Disk of course needs to be partitioned when installing XP. I am not familiar with partitioning. Is there a simple method or program that I can do this with?

Thank you,

 

[DocBrown]

You can do it with a Bootable Partition Wizard CD

:ar: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html?ltr=P

 

[King Arthur]

Make absolutely certain to connect only the HDD you want to wipe before you start DBAN. DBAN will wipe any and all HDDs it can detect on startup.

To quote DBAN's website:

DBAN is a self-contained boot disk that automatically deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect.

 

[AddRAM]

The Hard Disk of course needs to be partitioned when installing XP. I am not familiar with partitioning. Is there a simple method or program that I can do this with?

Thank you,

And you can also use the XP disc and a calculator to do your partitioning.

1 GB = 1024 MB

200 GB partition would equal 204,800 MB simple

But using the PW disc is sooooo much easier and the preferred method of millions of Happy Windows 7 users all over the World.

 

[Melita]

Make absolutely certain to connect only the HDD you want to wipe before you start DBAN. DBAN will wipe any and all HDDs it can detect on startup.

To quote DBAN's website:

DBAN is a self-contained boot disk that automatically deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect.

Thank you. I will make sure to have only the HDD that I want erased, connected.

Regards,

 

[Melita]

The Hard Disk of course needs to be partitioned when installing XP. I am not familiar with partitioning. Is there a simple method or program that I can do this with?

Thank you,

And you can also use the XP disc and a calculator to do your partitioning.

1 GB = 1024 MB

200 GB partition would equal 204,800 MB simple

But using the PW disc is sooooo much easier and the preferred method of millions of Happy Windows 7 users all over the World.

When you say "you can also use the XP disk", I take it to mean the option offered to partition the disk during the process of installing XP. If I am correct, is there any advantage in using the PW disk over the XP option?

Thank you,

 

[Melita]

Make absolutely certain to connect only the HDD you want to wipe before you start DBAN. DBAN will wipe any and all HDDs it can detect on startup.

To quote DBAN's website:

DBAN is a self-contained boot disk that automatically deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect.

I booted with DBAN but it failed to erase the disk. I have installed Ubuntu in it and it is still there. I booted with it three times using only 'autonuke' option because I don't know anything about the other five options given. At the end of the process I got the following message.

"DBAN finished with no fatal errors"
The following was displayed in the log:
Error : dev/sde (process crash)
Error : dev/sdb (process crash)
Error : dev/sdd (process crash)
Error : dev/sdc (process crash)
Error : dev/sda (process crash)
What can I do now? I am really keen on cleaning the disk before installing XP, although it may not be necessary to do so.

Thank you,

 

[VistaKing]

See if this will help you partition the hard drive . It has photos

:ar: Partitioning A Blank Hard Drive During XP Installation

 

[x BlueRobot]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html

The process should be similar or the same as Windows XP.

 

[Melita]

See if this will help you partition the hard drive . It has photos

:ar: Partitioning A Blank Hard Drive During XP Installation

The first paregraph in you link states "If there is an operating system installed, the existing partitions will be listed in the lower half of the screen. Selecting an existing partition and using the D key will delete it, along with any data and program files it contains"

If Ubuntu is simply installed without partitioning the disk for that purpose, will there be an option to delete that during installation?

Thank you,

 

[VistaKing]

If should delete the partition any data or OS

 

[Melita]

The Hard Disk of course needs to be partitioned when installing XP. I am not familiar with partitioning. Is there a simple method or program that I can do this with?

Thank you,

And you can also use the XP disc and a calculator to do your partitioning.

1 GB = 1024 MB

200 GB partition would equal 204,800 MB simple

But using the PW disc is sooooo much easier and the preferred method of millions of Happy Windows 7 users all over the World.

How much of space should I allocate for the partition of XP Professional? Is there a sort of 'usual practice' for this, such as allocating a percentage of MB or GB more than the actual size of the operating system installation?

Regards,

 

[VistaKing]

Are you just installing the OS and applications and are you moving the Documents and Settings folder to another partition ?

 

[Britton30]

From your first post it sounded like XP was the only OS on this HDD?

 

[Melita]

Are you just installing the OS and applications and are you moving the Documents and Settings folder to another partition ?

I want to delete Ubuntu completely (without saving any thing), which is the only thing on this HDD and install XP Professional.

What is the advantage in installing the OS and applications in one partition and moving Documents and Settings to another partition. If it is the better thing to do I would like to do that.

 

[VistaKing]

Here is the how-to use DBAN

:ar: How to use DBAN to remove the contents from a hard disk - UCD IT Services

I know you tried using it before try again with the steps on the link

 

[King Arthur]

For Windows XP, I personally partition off 20~50GB for the C: drive. This leaves plenty of room to install XP as well as any programs and utilities that interface deeply with Windows.

The advantage of keeping your OS and personal data on separate partitions is that in the event you need to reformat C: all of your personal data will be on D: (or whatever applicable drive letter) and unaffected. I personally keep my OS and any programs and system utilities that work with/monitor the OS on C: while I keep all my personal data and programs like games on my data partitions (D: for the purposes of this example).

 

[Melita]

Thank you all for some great help. I used the XP Clean Install to wipe the disk clean during installation. I made the XP partition 40GB. Left the rest of the disk un-partitioned, to play with later, once I decide where to put what. It worked out fine.

Best regards,