hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

I need advice on removal of the microsoft hidden partition and other
software from a hard drive
leaving a completely clean hard drive.

please respond by email only as I do not have reliable email

Dick
315+399-6113


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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

On Sb, 22 sep 12, 14:31:06, d d wrote:
> I need advice on removal of the microsoft hidden partition and other
> software from a hard drive
> leaving a completely clean hard drive.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/yourdrive bs=1M

> please respond by email only as I do not have reliable email

http://www.debian.org/consultants/

Kind regards,
Andrei
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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

On 9/22/2012 11:31 AM, d d wrote:

I need advice on removal of the microsoft hidden partition and other
software from a hard drive
leaving a completely clean hard drive.

please respond by email only as I do not have reliable email




Since when is GMail not reliable email? Anyway, since you are
subscribed to debian-user, which is an email based mailing list, you
should get this in your email anyway, and responses will be searchable
via Web search engines for anyone else to find who has the same question...


http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

Download the System Rescue CD image from that link there, and burn it to
a bootable CD-ROM (use your CD burner's option to make a bootable disk
from an iso; don't just copy the iso to a disk.


Use the System Rescue disk to boot up the computer with the hard drive
you want to wipe. Then at the command prompt, run fdisk or cfdisk on
the drive (cfdisk /dev/hda or cfdisk /dev/sda or something like that.
You may need to do trial and error to determine which device it is).


Anyway, with cfdisk up, you should see all partitions on the drive and
can easily delete them and make new partitions. Before exiting cfdisk
though, be sure to hit "write" or whatever the menu option is to
effectively write your partition changes to the drive.



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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

On 9/22/2012 12:20 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Sb, 22 sep 12, 14:31:06, d d wrote:

I need advice on removal of the microsoft hidden partition and other
software from a hard drive
leaving a completely clean hard drive.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/yourdrive bs=1M



But does that remove the partitions themselves? I thought the OP was
wanting to actually delete the MS partitions, which are used to restore
a computer to its factory default with all the overbloated crappeware
that gets put on them by the OEM.


If this is a newly acquired drive without an already built up Linux box
to run it in, then the System Rescue CD mentioned in my other post is
the best way to prep it for a new life. Otherwise, putting it in an
already built system will do, just need to run the partitioner on it
(fdisk or cfdisk as mentioned previously.)




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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

On Saturday, September 22, 2012 03:33:47 PM Scarletdown wrote:
> On 9/22/2012 12:20 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > On Sb, 22 sep 12, 14:31:06, d d wrote:
> >> I need advice on removal of the microsoft hidden partition and other
> >> software from a hard drive
> >> leaving a completely clean hard drive.
> >
> > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/yourdrive bs=1M
>
> But does that remove the partitions themselves? I thought the OP was
> wanting to actually delete the MS partitions, which are used to restore
> a computer to its factory default with all the overbloated crappeware
> that gets put on them by the OEM.

Yes. The command writes zeroes to every block on the drive. Recovering the
data would require dismantling the drive and using specialized hardware to
read the edges of each track (to find residual data).

It's not a cryptographically secure erase, but for the OP's purpose, it should
suffice.


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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

On 9/22/2012 12:56 PM, Neal Murphy wrote:
Yes. The command writes zeroes to every block on the drive. Recovering
the data would require dismantling the drive and using specialized
hardware to read the edges of each track (to find residual data). It's
not a cryptographically secure erase, but for the OP's purpose, it
should suffice.


Ah, good to know. I've never used dd as far as I can remember. So that
is another way to achieve the same objective.



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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

http://dban.sf.net/ ought to help. download iso and burn to dvd or cd and
read up on dban and boot dban disk and dban will clean windows real good.
I think enter at the boot: prompt autostart 5 then go away and let dban do
its work. A 200MB disk if I remember right took 8 hours to clean so
figure accordingly for other disk sizes.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
jude <jdashiel@shellworld.net> Adobe fiend for failing to Flash



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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

* d d <rotcrv@gmail.com> [120922 18:51]:
> I need advice on removal of the microsoft hidden partition and other
> software from a hard drive
> leaving a completely clean hard drive.
>
> please respond by email only as I do not have reliable email
>
> Dick
> 315+399-6113

It sounds as if your wish is simply to purge M$, the machine-specific
"restore" partition, and bloatware from a new machine -- and not to
restore the drive to the "as-shipped-from-the-drive-manufacturer"
state.

Perhaps the easiest approach is to download the "gparted" ISO image,
copy the image to a small USB flash device (512 Mbyte is adequate) or
to a CD, and then boot directly into gparted from the USB or CD. See:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

for ISO images and instructions.

I have found gparted to be intuitive, rather fool-proof, and
exceptionally easy to use for this task. Using this approach, I have
purged the M$ from a number of machines -- including a Lenovo laptop,
on which I subsequently installed Debian squeeze.

Note that some newer machines are using a new BIOS scheme and a new
partitioning scheme. If your machine is one of these, you may find it
necessary to search with Google and educate yourself in order to
repartition the drive according to the new scheme. But getting rid of
the old partitions is not a problem; just use gparted.

RLH


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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:31:06 -0400, d d wrote:

> I need advice on removal of the microsoft hidden partition and other
> software from a hard drive
> leaving a completely clean hard drive.

You can use your manufacturer's hard drive disk utilities to perform a
low-level format.

> please respond by email only as I do not have reliable email

I think you meant "by telephone". If so, you have to be kidding :-)

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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hard drive clean / microsoft hidden partition
 

On 23/09/12 15:30, Camaleón wrote:
>
>> please respond by email only as I do not have reliable email
>
> I think you meant "by telephone". If so, you have to be kidding :-)

How did that get changed? The original post most certainly said
"telephone". I had the same thought as Camaleón


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