How do you format a blank hard drive?

Answer 1

If you mean "completely erase" it, the term is "Format" and you can perform it from DOS using the command "Format c:".

I think it is beyond formatting. I read today in the New York Times that John Jay College in NYC has adopted a program that covers the free space with zeroes.

The program your probably talking about is evidence-eliminator.com. This program erases all forensic evidence that remains on your hard drive after you format it, and believe you me it's alot. You can recover the entire contents of a formatted hard drive with the right tools. But EE prvents this and effectively "Zero's Out" you hard drive.

Formating a hard drive prepares it for use and deletes previous file names so Windows can't see them. They still exist and can be recovered with several Undelete programs. However, if you wish to remove all data from the drive, just formatting is not enough. "Zeroing" a drive rewrites over the entire drive, replacing previous data with simple 0's. There are several 'Zero' filling programs available on the web and some drive manufacturers include a zero utility on their support sites.The previous answer is pretty good, however it is argued that you can recover a zeroed hard drive. It is possible to retrieve "some" data however "fully recovering" a zeroed hard drive hasn't been done as far as i know.simply doing a "1 zero pass" will invert all the "1's" to "0's" (remember there are only 1's and 0's) hence "zeroing" however there is software available that can detect newly magnetized "0's" it simply re-inverts the "0's" to "1's" if you do a "7 zero pass" it's pretty much impossible to retrieve any information off the hard drive. look into the "DoD 5220.22-m" standard or "gutmann".hope this is useful.

Answer 2

* start * my computer * right click on the hard drive * format