Some questions about HDD cleaning/erasing.


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Hello Neowinians! I kindly ask you for some advices again as I am a bit unsure over a few things.

I bought a new PC on parts while keeping the old Sata 1 HDD. It is an Hitachi Deskstar 7200 RPM 500 GB.

In my head an idea was pushing me to clean my HDD as best as I can.

Here it comes: I deleted all my partitions and wiped my HDD wtih zeroes (Partition Magic).Then I have made a surface test for bad sectors and the results were green and clean.After a few minutes I started creating my new partitions with the Windows 7 Setup and I have made them wrong.Deleted the partitions again and started wiping the disk once more time.

Am I crazy? I am trying to restore my HDD and clean it as best as I can and if I am going wrong on something with the partitions I start all over again. Is it enough?Should I do another Surface test on sectors after wiping the HDD? I want to start installing Windows from a wanna be "fresh hdd".

I'd like to read your opinions and thank you for your time!

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HDD doesn't care if it is full or empty, so long as the partition / block is marked as free it will use it as if it was a new HDD

Only need to zero a drive for security really, sometimes you can repair a drive by zero'ing it I find if its just corrupted / read errors

What you are doing is called OCD ;)

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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

When you have to start right from the beginning because you did something out of place during the process

People who need everything in perfect order / symmetrical etc

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Man damn right you are!I just feel that if I don't make this right everything is going bull****. So no results from these operations.

:D Everything is fine, just delete the partition and create it again in setup and it will work just as well as it would if you do all the partition magic stuff again

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You detected this illness I suffer right now.I'll let the manager finish that wipe and start installing. It just happened in two hours and I went completely crazy over this :laugh: . A harsh disease I tell you!

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You detected this illness I suffer right now.I'll let the manager finish that wipe and start installing. It just happened in two hours and I went completely crazy over this :laugh: . A harsh disease I tell you!

I think every computer geek has some OCD, I do too :p

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Escape OCD? I don't think you can, mine got less as I got older but I've met people who have to wash their hands 100x and organise their belongings in certain orders, 1 shoe on the left of the fireplace, 1 shoe on the right etc

I guess you just learn to live with with, symmetry used to be a big thing for me, not so bad these days :)

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I 'll start to consider symmetry and this OCD thing.Thanks for the diagnosis as you were 100% right.Even a wrong restart makes me consider retarting everything again.Luckly I am mad with this thing only over my Windows wich I intend to keep it for a long time if everything goes perfect.

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sometimes you can repair a drive by zero'ing it I find if its just corrupted / read errors

Oh? Any source on that? I might need to give that a try because I keep running into those kind of drives at work. Been replacing them, but for ones not under warranty it would be worth a shot.
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Oh? Any source on that? I might need to give that a try because I keep running into those kind of drives at work. Been replacing them, but for ones not under warranty it would be worth a shot.

I am my source :)

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Loads of errors, normal format didn't help so I Zero'd it and its been fine for about 2 years since

EDIT - Actually come to think of it, the D: was my primary drive until it failed a few months ago, couldn't copy to or from the drive without the entire system freezing up, bought my 2TB HDD, eventually managed to get most of my data off the 1TB drive, Zero'd it, and its working 100% again as my Media Drive now

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Are you using GPT for those extra gigs?I also read somewhere that the surface test or sector reader is the same thing as a wipe but it doesn't delete anything.Is this right?

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Are you using GPT for those extra gigs?I also read somewhere that the surface test or sector reader is the same thing as a wipe but it doesn't delete anything.Is this right?

Spinrite is a good tool for maintaining disks, it will flip every bit on the disk and if it can't, it keeps trying until it does, the terminator of disk maintenance / recovery programs :)

Normal MBR akaik, I think its 2.2TB+ that needs GPT

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