Bootable DVD

Is there a recommended utilities program and technique for making a bootable CD or DVD that can be used to boot from, wipe the harddrive, do a military style purge of all data, and then install windows from?

Clay,

Your windows CD should be bootable and during the install you can choose to do a fresh install. Delete any existing partitions, create a new one, and start off with a fresh format. Not a quick format but a real format. That should do the trick.

For military style shredding, we use DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) here at work. It's a miniscule Linux ISO--just burn, boot, and shred. Once that's done, just rebuild from your original Windows disk.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

HiRen has a extensive collection of tools that are used from a DVD/CD boot.

Link to Site:
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

Link to Torrent:
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1179945

Gunny and I have used various versions of this to rescue and destroy many servers and workstations over the years.

I use Bart's PE or UBCD (both free). Great disk utilities and in a format that is familiar (Windows).

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Originally Posted by [AK]Nuts

I use Bart's PE or UBCD (both free). Great disk utilities and in a format that is familiar (Windows).

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I second BartPE. We use BartPE boot CDs to run Ghost when we want to make images of our classroom computers.

for disk wipes, I use GDISK with a dod wipe argument. We keep a DOD-Wipe bootable floppy disk on all of our ships for emergencies.

I forgot about BartPE! That's a cool one also.
GDISK is what the tech's use at my company. It also does a heck of a job.
So many tools,,, so little time.

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Originally Posted by [AK?]Brorlis

Not a quick format but a real format. That should do the trick.

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What's the difference between the two. I have always done the quick format.

A quick format merely erases the file allocation table leaving all data intact.

A true format, and even more so a military grade format which incorporates a series of writes and erases, and rewrites over the data truly makes the data unrecoverable by disc salvage tools, the FBI, terrorists.....etc....LOL.

There are tools that can recover data that has been written over as many as 1 or 2 times. Scary, or a godsend depending on your circumstance.

Hope that answers that for you.

Or, given the inexpensive nature of disks these days, you can always take a sledgehammer to it and toss it in the trash.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Squidly

Or, given the inexpensive nature of disks these days, you can always take a sledgehammer to it and toss it in the trash.

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I would like some 1080p of a beautiful woman in a school girl outfit performing a Sledgehammer Low Level Format on one of my old hard drives.... hmmmm baby.