During the installation process you will be presented with this dialog box, click "drive options" and then the "format" button and when finished if it doesn't help with the issue you will need to use this tutorial to do a wipe (secure erase) of the entire Hard Disk Drive (HDD) but before you do that try these suggestions first for a format.
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@BFK
Can it be used to do the 0's secure wipe with only one partition instead of the entire HDD?
Thanks for your interest, but somehow I got the virtual machine to work and even was able to install my printer by getting the driver from Canon. Now it has to hold...that is the challenge!
No, it will do the entire Hard Disk Drive (HDD) it will not do a single partition.
But you can have a look at Option Three in this tutorial at the link below for an out-line of how to do a partition specific wipe; just be sure to have backups just in case.
Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD
I'm glad it was a help to you and thanks for the update.
I have a llk' question about this... I'm about to format a HDD (is not an SDD) 250GB SataII, do I need to aplyi that align=64 command? or can I omit it.
See ya!!!
Thanks for the response... just a lil' one more: if I activate that, does any difference with normal sata II HD drives? BTW NICE tutorial, I recovered my laptop for a recursive fail with drivers and it even goes faster :P
See ya!!!
I'm glad it was useful to you, thanks for the update; It'll work the same for any Hard Disk Drives.
Hi Bare Foot Kid,
I'm not experienced in this area too much so my question might seem a little bit weird; does the wipe clean does anything to MBR? I did have some problems before with two disks: one of them was being used for the OS and then I bought another one, tried to install fresh copy of OS and had problems with MBR - the new one was formated under the old one, hence problems with proper boot. Eventually I managed to get it work through EasyBCD but the question is: would I have problems like this again after this wipe clean?
Thanks.
Hello Ukiii.
The 'clean all' (secure erase) cannot be done to any Hard Disk Drive that has any data on it you want to keep, it will destroy, over-write any/all data on the HDD and cannot be done to a single partition on a HDD, it will do the whole drive and everything will be lost including the MBR for the HDD, see the warning from the tutorial I quoted below.
Warning
Do not do this to any SSD or HDD that has data on it you don't want to lose, the first thing this does is to mark the drive as "Unallocated Space" and then writes zeroes ( 0's ) to the entire drive, it's known as a "Secure Erase" and it will make data un-recoverable, it cannot be done to just a single partition on a drive, it will do the whole drive.
You have been warned!
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