Wiping IDE drive formats

[DGB]

Hi All,
Recently I posted a new thread regarding formatting IDE drives for the DPS PAR card. I have two used drives that seem to have a format that the PAR board rejects.  I need to know some way to wipe these drives clean of the format that is currently on them.  I have PCs that I can use to do this but they will probably replace the file system with FAT-32 or the newer NTFS.  I just want to remove what is there so the drives will appear to the PAR board as a new, never before formatted drive.  If anyone out there knows how to do this please give me some ideas here.  Thanks.

Dave
 

[adolescent]

I've used OnTrack DataEraser to clean a HD I was giving away.  It allows to write a pattern to the entire HD area  (I used 00 for simplicity).  It's a commercial product, but I'm sure you can find something similar like this:

Edit: fix link.

http://www.killdisk.com/

[kal]

If you're on Linux, you can wipe it clean with shred(1). I'm positive there're similar programs for Windows...

[DGB]

adolescent wrote:
I've used OnTrack DataEraser to clean a HD I was giving away.  It allows to write a pattern to the entire HD area  (I used 00 for simplicity).  It's a commercial product, but I'm sure you can find something similar like this:

Edit: fix link.

http://www.killdisk.com/

Thanks for the info and the URL.  Already been there and downloaded their free download version.  Hopefully this will work.

[lorddef]

Winhex and other hex editors will eraze the entire surface of the drive, but I'm not sure thats what you need. Sounds like you need something to set the drive up correctly rather than destroy the data on it.

Someone will have set this up before so I'm sure if theres nothing on the net someone here will be able to tell you.

When it comes to totally erazing a disk nothing does the job better than a hammer.  :lol:

[T3000]

Is the drive being seen by the PAR? If so I belive you can format the drive from the PAR through the Preferences panel.

I have tried several old ide drives, reset the jumpers until one worked.  Got frustrated with the process and made sure that the next drives were at least the types listed in the PAR compatibility notes from the manual. Was hit and miss but I finally have two 4.3 gig units.  

I tried looking for the DPS information base, but it looks like http://www.leitch.com has taken down the old tech pages.

Noticed you have DPS vectorscope listed in your equipment line up.  Any chance of getting a decent copy of the manual?

[patrik]

@T3000:

If you have the url, you can try searching for the old tech page at http://web.archive.org/.


/Patrik

[Jope]

In linux, you can just dd it full of /dev/zero.. Much faster - this guy doesn't need industrial grade wiping.