How Would You Recommend?

Shadowlinex

<div class="IPBDescription">Formating hard drive!</div> OK, that soes it i'm fed up with this old hard drive of mine, way to many bugs floating around, so i want to know how someone formats their hard drice "COMPLETELY?"

Rue

Maybe just make a bootable windows disk and start your PC with that, then choose complete format. I think you can do a quick format but it only deletes the FAT.

Or get a really really powerfull magnet next to your PC

Shadowlinex

Yeah, theres is that way but i'm talking a high-level format, not low-level.

Cyndane

I say disconnect the hard drive, put it in a new computer, boot from other computers OS and select complete format. That works well. :-)

Necrotic

"High level" format?

A low level format was something that some BIOS's had which meant completely wiping every single track, but I haven't seen one in a while, so therefore a high level is just an ordinary format. If you're talking physical bugs (bad clusters) with the drive a format won't do _too_ much good long term, it may section them off short term but they tend to spread like mould anyway. If you mean bugs as in windows is running a bit crappy etc then an ordinary format will do you. You can create a bootable floppy disk from Add/Remove programs in control panel on 98/ME and possibly XP (don't quote me on that its been so long since I've used anything other than win2k) but also you can boot from the CD if you set it as a bootable media in the BIOS.
After booting from the floppy/CD at the command prompt type
format c:
and press y

Make sure you have
(.) Your OS CD
(.) ALL your driver CDs
(.) Serial keys for windows/software etc
(.) Any other data you need like passwords you've got written down in a .txt file somewhere

Also of course make sure you back everything up that you don't want to lose...