Wiping your Hard drive

[mikeyj12]

I'm selling my laptop and I am going to wipe my hard drive using dariks boot and nuke utility (http://www.dban.org/) and then re install windows vista.

However I only have the recovery disks I made when the laptop was new. Will install windows vista afresh from a clean hard drive or does it only fix corrupt OS's?

Thank You.

 

[rohan23]

You don't need to wipe your hard drive if you're going to be doing a fresh install. That deletes everything for you.

 

[wozelbeak]

i thought that a fresh install would only format the HDD.
I think that the data which is not overwritten by the fresh install is still recoverable.

 

[dude_56013]

Yup rohan, wozelbeak is correct. Formatting just tells the harddrive to overwrite any information it needs to in the future. The only way to TRULY erase a hard drive is to "write zeros" (I think this is still the current way, anyways) to it. The OP mentioned DBAN which works wonderfully. He mentions he will SELL the laptop...which means that he probably should fully erase the hdd for security reasons.

To the OP: I'm not positive about the recovery disks. My gut answer is to tell you that no, you can't do a fresh install with them, but I could be wrong. You'd want to find an OEM Vista CD to do a fresh install. I believe MS can send you one but I'm not sure. I "legally" torrented (DL'd) and OEM disk (one that had NO KEYGEN OR CRACK) so that I could reinstall client O/S's. It's probably "illegal" to do that, but it's "legal" to use it if you understand what I'm saying...I did not have the time to wait for MS to send a copy.

Someone will def. help you here though, I think.

 

[rohan23]

If he deletes the partition, the data is fully erased. That's why they call it a "destructive" reinstall.

 

[dude_56013]

IDK, I'm still convinced that to truly get rid of data he either needs to use DBAN or do an unconditional format (which also writes zeros IIRC)...might as well be on the safe side. I would imagine there's a reason why DBAN and similar programs are even around...

Plus I found a few things with a quick google search that seem to make partition recovery simple enough. Here and here. Just food for thought. I'm just saying, I'd rather be safe than sorry.

 

[nanotech1]

Deleting the partition tables still leaves the hard drive open to recovery tools that ignore that type of header information. Boot and nuke is really the safe way to go.

 

[mikeyj12]

thanks dude_56014.

Does anyone know for certain if using recovery disks will install your new os on a wiped hard drive?

 

[dude_56013]

With a quick google search, it looks like you CANNOT use the recovery disks to do a fresh install of Vista. You'll either have to get an OEM CD from a friend who has one, call MS and see if you can obtain one, or torrent one (just make sure it's one with no cracks or keygens; even though this is still illegal probably) and make sure it's the SAME type that would've come with your system. For instance, you most likely have the 32 bit edition so you'd want an OEM version of the 32 bit disk.

 

[nanotech1]

Recovery disks usually do a disk image write over the drive which installs the default OS and a bunch of ads. You are correct that for a fresh install you would need an OEM disc.