Utility to completely blank a Thinkpad drive

[JohnDrake]

This utility will completely wipe a Thinkpad's drive, and with the proper parameters, will wipe the hidden system partition as well. It needs to be put on some bootable external media (USB floppy, put on a bootable CD, bootable USB Thumb drive, etc).

It will not give a "Are you sure" warning. Be careful with it. Read the TXT file. All "parts" of the program must be present in the same directory it is executed from.

It is VERY good for running before using recovery CD's.

http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/n/t/n ... otkill.zip

[Conmee]

JohnDrake,

Excellent utility that people will find useful. Thanks!

Daniel

[carbon_unit]

This one will do different levels of data wiping.
http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/au ... stall.html
It can overwrite data to a level that is NSA approved.

[JohnDrake]

The utility I posted is not to be used for a "secure" erase...IBM has Secure Data Disposal (no charge) for that purpose. This utility can access the hidden partition on the drive and erase that with the rest of the device.

It does it very fast. For all intents and purposes, follow on products (like the recovery CD's and ghost) would view the drive as blank. If you want to recover the area taken by the recovery partition (which is unwise, in my opinion), or if you are about to do a total recovery with the IBM recovery CD's, then this is a good program to use. In fact, it probably should be run before any recovery CD set is run.

[akhavan]

JohnDrake,

I extracted the zip file to a floppy but when I boot my computer it can not read the floppy can you tell me what I'm doing wrong please.

All it says is:

Remove disk or other Media
Press any key to restart

The reason I want to use the utility is because I have lost access to my Pre-Desktop Area. Even when I Disable it from BIOS I still can not see/aces it. It happened to my 60GB backup drive after I upgraded the firmware some time ago. I'm hoping your utility will solve my problem. (After using the utility I'm planning to use the recovery CDs)

Thanks

Sepehr

[akhavan]

OK I installed on floppy.

When I ran "bootkil2.exe" it worked fine. Then I ran "bootkil2.exe /psa" and I got the following:

Error: Set Max Address ATA Command Failed

Then I ran the CD recovery. It asked me if I want to create Product Recovery Program. I entered Y (Yes)

Then it went to a loop and it would keep booting up and asking me the same question. While it was reading the CD recovery I think I saw a line that said Set ATA command failed or something like that.

I ran advance Hitachi Drive Fitness test and passed.

Any idea?

Thanks

Sepehr

[Aramitz]

You've too "Ultimate Boot CD 3.0" plenty of usefuls softs for HD

SystemRescueCd 0.2.15 with QtParted which is a perfect free clone for Partition Magic

[akhavan]

OK.

It did not work for me. I could not install Product Recovery Program. So I just reinstalled the recovery XP on the hard disk with some difficulty.

Everything works except I still can not get to to Access IBM! Finished where I started from.

Sepehr

[lvlolvlo]

here you guys go

first you need to determine which xp you're going to install
Gold (XP no SP)
SP1 (XP w/SP1)
SP2 (XP w/SP2)
after which go2 http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994 and pick it


http://tinyurl.com/5wf9y
it has the SMART utility which also does a low level format

the SMART utility also does a "Drive Fitness Test" which will see if your drive is "fit" all you need to do is burn the iso and when I mean burn Iso i mean use an image burner....meaning use nero or similar...capice?

[akhavan]

No. My Pre-Desktop Area is completely lucked out after the firmware I did several months ago. Basically I have lost about 2 GB of my hard disk.

Since its my backup drive I think I can except it. But I still like to get aces to it.

Sepehr