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Formatting hard drive (but not write zeros!) using boot disk?


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Windows will no longer boot, likely due to a physical hard drive issue.

 

The laptop also fails to boot from a Windows disk.

 

I want to reformat the hard drive using a utility boot disk and re-install Windows.

 

Once Windows is reinstalled, I want to try and recover data on the hard drive onto a USB hard drive before the internal drive is replaced.

 

I have tried the Ultimate Boot CD but it seems the utilities on there only securely erase the drive.

 

Any suggestions?

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If it were me I would use a Live USB key, take any files that I can, then format the drive. I'm not sure why you would want to format the drive and then try and recover information?

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If it were me I would use a Live USB key, take any files that I can, then format the drive. I'm not sure why you would want to format the drive and then try and recover information?

I've ran the Ubuntu Live CD and it can't detect either of my USB hard drives.

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I've ran the Ubuntu Live CD and it can't detect either of my USB hard drives.

Are the drives possibly using the ExFat filesystem? Ubuntu can't read ExFat as it is, but you can download the necessary items to get it to read ExFat.
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Are the drives possibly using the ExFat filesystem? Ubuntu can't read ExFat as it is, but you can download the necessary items to get it to read ExFat.

It doesn't have drivers to be able to use the Wi-Fi network and we have no way of connecting it via. a LAN cable.

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Any windows install disk can format the drive?

 

Where is the data your trying to recover?  On the drive windows is installed on - or some usb disks?  Reinstalling windows to a disk you have files on that you need to recover would be a horrible idea!!

 

Take the disk out and connect it to another system if you need to do a recovery on it for files.

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