Using gdisk to wipe a hard drive

For years I have been using gdisk to wipe hard drives

I created floppy disk with the batch file.

I got gdisk from my original cd of ghost 2003 and use qwipe.

It works fine for a PATA – IDE hard drive, but I cannot get it to work with a SATA hard drive.

Suggestions please

@ wp


Quote:

but I cannot get it to work with a SATA hard drive

More info, please.

What error message(s) are you getting, if any?  How do you know it's not working?

What size SATA HDD(s) have you tried so far?

Hooked up to the Motherboard--or to a USB adaptor?

What response do you get if you try the gdisk command:  gdisk /status ?  Does the SATA HDD information show up in the response--or do you get any error messages?

thanks for the reply.

any size sata  <  no go

directly attached to mb

i will try again and report back error messages also.

ps

same problem with dbanuke.

To All--if you did not understand the reference  (I know I didn't!):



Quote:

same problem with dbanuke

Hmmmm.....doing a Google search shows some references to using this program--but, no useable links:  http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=dbanuke&btnK=Google+Search&rlz=1R2GGLL_enUS385&oq=dbanuke&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=hp.12...3688.3688.1.6563.1.1.0.0.0.0.219.219.2-1.1.0...0.0.3MG8WXLtaZ0&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=2d5960183404e38f&biw=1680&bih=805

But, using this term *dban nuke* brings up a much more meaningful response:  http://www.google.com/#hl=en&rlz=1R2GGLL_enUS385&sa=X&psj=1&ei=fdHET4iyAsea2AXcm_nUCA&ved=0CDsQBSgA&q=dban+nuke&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=5bb75630b6f5f824&biw=1680&bih=805


Quote:

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers.

http://dougvitale.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/dariks-boot-and-nuke/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/

http://www.dban.org/help

http://www.dban.org/faq

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/forums/forum/208932

http://www.dban.org/documentation


@ wp


Again, where in the process does the program *fail*?

thanks for the reply.

qwipe worked perfectly on a sata drive.

maybe the hard drive i tried it on before was bad.

probably that was why i was trying to wipe it.

thanks again.

ps

i will try same with dban nuke when time allows.

@ wp


Quote:

qwipe worked perfectly on a sata drive. maybe the hard drive i tried it on before was bad.

Thanks for the feedback.  A bad drive certainly could cause problems.

If you have the time, it would be interesting to know what error message that bad HDD generated for gdisk.

To All

If you want to know more about what *gdisk* can do, here's a couple reference links--it's Ghost's command line partitioning tool that has some other helpful functions as well.  *Gdisk* is the DOS based tool, and *gdisk32* works under Windows:

Switches: GDisk and GDisk32 for Norton Ghost 2003

Switches: GDisk

thank you for the references.  I have read them and saved them.

yesterday i was trying to wipe a 750 gig sata drive.

I got following display

starting windows 98

A:\>gdisk 1 /del /all /qwipe
GDISK (E) No such fixed disk -- 1

A:\
A:\
A:\

i booted from floppy with the following line in the autoexec.bat file

A:\>gdisk 1 /del /all /qwipe

is there a size limit for gdisk ?

maybe the hard disk is bad. 
i will try spinrite and report back.

@ wp


Quote:

A:\>gdisk 1 /del /all /qwipe GDISK (E) No such fixed disk -- 1

So, don't try to *automate* gdisk's functions.  Just boot to DOS and then type:  gdisk /status

See what listing of HDDs shows up.

Why not use */diskwipe* instead of */gwipe*--looks like you could bypass the */del /all* commands with *diskwipe*:

From here:  Switches: GDisk


Quote:

GDisk /DISKWIPE /? This command displays the command-line format for the /DISKWIPE operation. The /DISKWIPE command wipes out all information on the hard disk. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Warning: The /DISKWIPE command wipes out the entire contents of the physical disk. Make sure you specify the correct fixed physical disk before proceeding. You can use the /STATUS command with a disk number to check the identity of the fixed disk that you specify.

Quote:

is there a size limit for gdisk ?

Maybe, but I would try to determine the correct drive number that Gdisk is using/seeing based on the *gdisk /status* result to see if that command line needs to be changed for some reason.

thank you for feedback.

spinrite says that 750 gig sata disk is bad.

both diskwipe and dban and nuke worked fine on a 320 gig sata drive.

i will keep experimenting and report back.

i gave up wiping hard drives before ghosting to them.

What is your current SATA mode?

Perhaps gdisk will only recognise the drive in ATA mode?