How do you....
Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 12:58 pm
.....completely clean out a hard drive even removing Windows?
If yoiu just want to clear the contents of the drive then the simplest and fastest method is a quick format. Start the computer in DOS mode, or shut down to an MS-DOS prompt from the 'shut down' menu and type in:
format c: \q \s
and hit enter.
That will clear the drive contents by erasing the file allocation table only and copy the basic system files from memory, so the disk is bootable. If you want to erase the files properly, then remove the \q command. It will take a lot longer, but it's much more thorough.
