I bought 2 programs from office Max one called Wipe and the other
Wipe media! Whats the difference if any between the two and how
would they be used. Under XP/Pro I would assume they are intended
to clean a C: drive of all data includeing partitions (ntfs).
But what is the difference between the 2 disks. and what cammand
line would one use to activate the process. Hit F12 when power up
Xp then choose the Boot disk as C: to clean the HD eompletely.
Joe


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Joseph Fenn wrote:
Joe, do you normally purchase software the is accompanied by a USER
MANUAL that you do not read?

Q

I'll have to just put em in the cdr drive and see if theres a
builtin help or doc file I can read.
Joe

Joseph Fenn <jfenn@lava.net> wrote:
What criteria did you use to select those two programs?

"Joseph Fenn" <jfenn@lava.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.BSI.4.61.0601141636050.26106@malasada.la va.net...
CD.

to use it to complete clear everything off a NTFS formatted
type of HD. He said it would take out the partitions if any
as well. Apparently plain "format" command wont work with
the NTFS system
Joe

On 14 Jan 2006 in comp.sys.laptops, Joseph Fenn wrote:

I'm not sure about your questions about the specific programs, but this
should give some general insight:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_wipe

--
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe

Joseph Fenn <jfenn@lava.net> wrote:
Well, he's wrong about format not working, but let's back up a step.
What are you trying to accomplish? What's on this drive you are
trying to "wipe", and what will you do with it after it's "wiped"?

C: drive. Even the C: prompt dissappeared. I guess I should have
used the "Media Wipe" but its too late now. I just wanted to
take out all the data on C: drive so I could restore from a Ghost
image on H: drive. But cant get to the C: drive no more even from
a floppy in A: drive. So guess I got a dead P4 Lenovo to put
in the closet.
Joe

William P.N. Smith <news2006a@compusmiths.com> writes:
I think the context is making sure that any info on the hard drive is
erased. Format doesn't do that (except maybe through some special
option?), thus the existence of unformatting utiliies.

The usual reason for wanting to wipe a drive is you want to redeploy
the drive and make sure that any confidential info on it is gone
before the new deployment.

Example: at work a while back, I was asked to prep a laptop with a
software demo for delivery to a customer (our sales guy was going to
bring the prepped laptop to the customer site, show them how to run
the software, then leave the laptop with them for a 1 month
evaluation). The laptop I got from the IT dept was our CFO's old
laptop and it still contained a bunch of sensitive financial docs
including some that had been deleted but were recoverable. Oops.
That was a drive that needed to be wiped.

Joseph Fenn <jfenn@lava.net> writes:
You need to do an OS reinstall from bootable media.

Joseph Fenn <jfenn@lava.net> wrote:
Let me guess, the H: drive is another partition on the same physical
hard disk as C:, and you've just wiped the whole thing.

If it's separate, you could probably boot from a Ghost floppy and
restore the image.

If you want to restore a Ghost image, there's no need to wipe the
destination drive first, as you'll overwrite it with the Ghost image.

OTOH, the "Wipe" software you bought without knowing it's function or
why you bought it sure was effective. 8*}

I'd offer to help, but I think I'll run screaming instead.

No William !! You guessed wrong. The H dr is a Maxtor 100 gig usb
and it has GHOST v9 and the original image file on it. My intent
was to "wipe" the laptop C: drive, then restore original image which
includes the works, partitions, winxp/pro, and whole 10 yards in it.
The "wipe" went okay and it cleaned the C: drive and verified it was
clean, partitions and all. Big problem is it did'nt even leave
the c: prompt. When I boot up the laptop the only active drive
visible is the A: drive. If cry to call the C: dr cant get to it at
all. Hence unable to direct the image from the Maxtor "one touch"
back to the c: drive. So then I chkd the bios and told it to
restore the original settings and saved same. Still no C:
prompt. Nothing at all.
Joe

Joseph Fenn <jfenn@lava.net> wrote:
So why'd you bother with "wipe"? In case you hadn't noticed, setting a
1 or a zero in a computer "wipes" whatever was there before!

That's not a "problem", that's what you asked for! A zeroed out disk.
You seem to be confused about what is a partition, file system, and so
on. They're only patterns of bits - if you write a new pattern over
them, the old doesn't show through! So there is no need to "wipe".

Well of course not. That's like complaining there's no boat left after
you applied the acetylene torch to "clean" it. What you wanted to do
was simply delete the files in the file system, not vamosh the file
system too. But you could have saved yourself the bother by just
writing a new file system.

Peter

Joseph Fenn <jfenn@lava.net> wrote:
OK, so either boot from the USB drive or boot Ghost from a floppy or
recovery CD and restore the image.

IMHO, you really need to take this to someone who knows what they are
doing, this is a 10-minute job for someone with a clue, but there
don't seem to be any on your island.

Joseph Fenn <jfenn@lava.net> writes:
If you wiped the drive, then it no longer "has" Ghost v9 and the image
file. Rather, it "had" those files.

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
AFAICT it's an external hard drive, and he wiped the system drive. One
can only guess how he did the Ghost backup, how recent it is, or how
easy it is to restore it, but IMHO Joseph doesn't have the skillset to
formulate the questions he needs to ask, so he needs to hire some
professional assistance.

just what you said above. I assumed WIPE was just a NTFS
capable type of formating tool to clear all off the C: Drive so
I could get the image back into the c: drive.
Now I dont have a c: prompt so thats impossible.
Joe

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, William P.N. Smith wrote:

should we call it IMSO instead!!!!!!!
Joe

waiting for me to get a C: prompt back so I can restore to c:
Joe