I am sending my TC1000 back to HP but need to wi

sammysams · 03-02-2003, 07:31 PM

I am sending my TC1000 back to HP but need to wipe the drive of sensitive data. With no disk drive or floppy drive I dont know how to reformat the hard drive. Any clues on how to reformat the hard drive or other ways to wipe the hard drive clean of data??? the system is on a network. thanks

Any ideas how to access the system bios would also be helpful. thanks

Andre · 03-02-2003, 09:03 PM

Why dont you remove the HD before sending it back? It is really simple to remove the disk and I do not think that HP will have anything against that. Of course, only if the problem is not disk related.

sammysams · 03-03-2003, 01:18 AM

I am sending the entire unit back because I was sent another unit. Need to either wipe the drive or reformat to make sure none of my business or personal data is retrievable. I dont plan to keep the hard drive. Any suggestions?

MooseMaster · 03-03-2003, 02:05 AM

Even after a total format the data is still on the drive. And you're paranoid.

brammerf · 03-03-2003, 02:10 AM

Just because someone is paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't out to get them. (I love double negatives.)

duffy · 03-03-2003, 02:16 AM

You could just swap hard drives.

splintercell · 03-03-2003, 02:34 AM

There are software packages for secure wipes of hard drives, but since you can't boot off a removable device, it may be tricky. How about mounting the TPC hard drive on another computer as a secondary, and using a software package to wipe it out?

Big Lar · 03-03-2003, 02:37 AM

Without an external boot device (PXE Server, CDRom or Floppy) you are going to have a time formatting your TC1000's drive. Another option, and one that is actually more secure would be to use a program like Norton Wipe Info (I assume they still make this, it is part of Norton Utilities). You could simply delete the files you want cleared, and then run Wipe Info. It makes deleted files unrecoverable.

I hope this helps,

--Lar

vready · 03-03-2003, 04:18 AM

There is a useful shareware program called 'Eraser' that does this kind of multi-pass secure disk wipe

Check out:

http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/

acronym · 03-03-2003, 04:18 AM

I agree with peter.

mount the hd in a laptop. Put a utility like killdisk.exe on a win98 boot floppy. Run killdisk a couple times (7 for gov't scrubbing).

if you don't have access to a laptop, you can either create your own boot cd with killdisk on it, or buy a 2.5-3.5 hard drive adapter and install the drive on your desktop pc.