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My aunt and grandparents have some computers that they want to get rid of, all of them have Windows XP and a recovery partition (which allows them to restore the computer to factory settings). So what I want to do is completely wipe the hard drive (C:
drive) partitions without removing the recovery partitions so that someone else can still use the system.
I have no experience wiping hard drives, but I’ve gone through the recovery procedures before, and installed OSs (Windows XP, macOS, Ubuntu) before so I have a little experience.
Any suggestions?
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Duplicate of so many SU questions which are all duplicates of http://superuser.com/questions/4678/erasing-data-before-selling-a-computer
– Hello71 – 2010-07-28T00:01:26.6473
the answer to that question (which I already saw) is to use Darik's Boot and Nuke which is supposed to "automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect" which you'll note I specifically said in my question I do not want to do (in order to allow who ever recieves the pc to do system restores in the future). So how is that an answer to my question?
– erikvold – 2010-07-28T00:04:53.2671You really don't need to save the recovery partition. – James Watt – 2010-07-28T00:08:08.360
DBAN lets you select which drive to wipe on startup. There is an option to just wipe everything, but AFAIR it's not on by default. – sleske Jun 22 at 10:46 – Hello71 – 2010-07-28T00:10:34.987
alright I'll give this a shot on one of these laptops, and see how it goes.. – erikvold – 2010-07-28T00:21:15.430
2I'm pretty sure that DBAN doesn't let you select a specific partition to wipe. Anything on the actual drive will be gone. – James Watt – 2010-07-28T00:35:21.090
1@Erik - like James said, it's true that the recovery partition is rarely of use. If someone buys a laptop, he will install his system most likely from the cd, not from the recovery partition. However, I understand that this is your need, and as such it makes your question different from the proposed duplicate (which is about erasing absolutely anything on the drive). – Gnoupi – 2010-07-28T07:29:04.740