There's a little bit of a backstory here... bear with me.
I'm working on fixing up a friend's laptop because it won't boot. Apparently they had just reformatted it, because when I start it up I get a screen congratulating me on installing windows. I'm told to click the "finish" button, but when I do the whole thing freezes up. I then attempt to reformat the drive again, and am told that a hard drive is not detected. I've ran a diagnostic that is is in the BIOS, and everything checks out OK.
Anyways, I've never used Boot and Nuke so I don't exactly know what it does. Can I put it on a flash drive, boot the laptop from that drive, wipe everything and then reformat?
I've also ordered a new HDD from newegg in case things go screwy.
[quote]Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.[/quote] :smile:
If I'm not mistaken, it also hardcore rewrites your drive and zeroes it so it's impervious to all but the best data recovery.
[QUOTE=Cheesemonkey;17981029]If I'm not mistaken, it also hardcore rewrites your drive and zeroes it so it's impervious to all but the best data recovery.[/QUOTE]
Yeah it comes with a bunch of options, of which the most secure take ages.
[QUOTE=MTMod;17980301]There's a little bit of a backstory here... bear with me.
I'm working on fixing up a friend's laptop because it won't boot. Apparently they had just reformatted it, because when I start it up I get a screen congratulating me on installing windows. I'm told to click the "finish" button, but when I do the whole thing freezes up. I then attempt to reformat the drive again, and am told that a hard drive is not detected. I've ran a diagnostic that is is in the BIOS, and everything checks out OK.
Anyways, I've never used Boot and Nuke so I don't exactly know what it does. Can I put it on a flash drive, boot the laptop from that drive, wipe everything and then reformat?
I've also ordered a new HDD from newegg in case things go screwy.[/QUOTE]
Boot and nuke activates a little process within the harddrive that formats it, much faster than any software format from what I hear.
[QUOTE=wabash;17982330]Boot and nuke activates a little process within the harddrive that formats it, much faster than any software format from what I hear.[/QUOTE]
:siren: SELFDESTRUCT SEQUENCE :siren:
Don't boot in nukes usually use a technique of completely filling the hard drive with bits, overwriting whatever is there, and then doing it again, and again, to to specified amount of wipes?
[QUOTE=cryticfarm;17982826]Don't boot in nukes usually use a technique of completely filling the hard drive with bits, overwriting whatever is there, and then doing it again, and again, to to specified amount of wipes?[/QUOTE]
Yeah that's basically what it does. Also it usually fills it with zeroes.
So running DBAN would eliminate any possibility of reformatting?
[QUOTE=MTMod;17983970]So running DBAN would eliminate any possibility of reformatting?[/QUOTE]
No you will have a fresh copy of whatever os your using it just wipes everything.
[QUOTE=MTMod;17983970]So running DBAN would eliminate any possibility of reformatting?[/QUOTE]
I don't even know what to answer to this.
Step 1: Download a DBAN image.
Step 2: Burn it to a CD or copy it to a flash drive.
Step 3: Boot the laptop from the CD or flash drive.
Step 4: Run the nuke.
Step 5: Install the OS.
Since you sound like you have absolutely no experience in this, I hope you have a OS to install.
I used to use this "morguds erasure suite", it had an option for using your harddrives built in secure erase function? or something. It was pretty effective. Drive showed up as unformatted and installs seemed more stable after using it.
[QUOTE=Lego399;17986700]Step 1: Download a DBAN image.
Step 2: Burn it to a CD or copy it to a flash drive.
Step 3: Boot the laptop from the CD or flash drive.
Step 4: Run the nuke.
Step 5: Install the OS.
Since you sound like you have absolutely no experience in this, I hope you have a OS to install.[/QUOTE]
Thank you. This is all I needed. Trust me I know what I'm doing when it comes to this stuff, I just don't have any experience with DBAN... I have no idea what it does so I didn't want to fuck up my friend's laptop. Thanks again.
Update. I ran DBAN, and popped the XP disk into the drive and booted. The XP installation [i]still[/i] says that there isn't even a hard drive connected. What the ef.
You can safely say it's fucked then.
[QUOTE=MTMod;17995940]Update. I ran DBAN, and popped the XP disk into the drive and booted. The XP installation [i]still[/i] says that there isn't even a hard drive connected. What the ef.[/QUOTE]
-snip- oh I see
[QUOTE=hexpunK;17997103]You can safely say it's fucked then.[/QUOTE]
Yeah I'm assuming the hard drive is fried. Good thing I've got one ordered.
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