1. Cannot Format External Hard Drive

I have heard from a couple of sources that some viruses or perhaps worms or Trojans can remain intact on a hard drive even after it has been reformatted. I recently inherited a computer running Windows 2000 that was badly infected with over 1000 viruses.

Norton AntiVirus was able to clean, repair or quarantine all of the viruses, software was reinstalled, the computer seems to be working normally, and no viruses are now found on a comprehensive full system scan.I was warned by a local computer technician that even though the computer scans clean and is working well, that I shouldn't put it back on our local network because there is a small region on the hard drive that is not overwritten by normal formatting and some viruses are known to hide there. He suggested that it was still possible for this computer to infect other computers on our network.That seems difficult for me to believe. All of our computers are running virus scanners. It would seem to me that, at least if it were a known virus, it would be recognized and stopped immediately if it reappeared and tried to spread to another computer.Has such a threat ever been documented? Is there any reason to fear that this computer could be harboring a significant threat to other computers on the network?

If there were a virus or other threat that is so invisible and difficult to remove, wouldn't it be just as reasonable to think that it could be present on any computer with similar protection?Any insight offered is greatly appreciated. The office had such survive.

They forgot to scan diskettes and CDs and the pest was in a Word document.' The cat came back the very next day.' Then we have the old 'Boot Sector Virus'.

Formatting with say DOS FORMAT doesn't overwrite such.And YES, all has been written about many many times.The lesson was simple. All uptodate antivirus and to scan not only the PC, but all media in the building.- But today I find that formatting is rarely the right answer. The tools we have now save us from such work.Bob. Try to find out first if it is really infected:It is always recommended to disconnect any system from the network while in the process of disinfecting.Do not modify, open or save anything if there is an infection.Turn off the system instead of shutdown to prevent any malware in modifying or creating new processes or startup items (some malware renames itself or replicate each time Windows restarted or shutdown)Boot the infected system using rescue disk instead of booting from hard-disk. Doing this will prevent the malware in running (hopefully)Use an uninfected system to download the following:- it will terminate all malware instances in memory, remove malware registry entries, remove malware entries from system files and scan for and delete all malware copies in all local hard drives. Read the on how to use it.Use those tools to scan the system for malware or infection.Do not turn off System Restore (if enabled and if you are using an OS that has this feature) until the system is cleaned.Create a backup of important files and datas regularly. Trend Micro's PC-Cillin had a good review on CNet (or somewhere), the review said that Trend Micro's software is better than Symantec or McAfee.But if you ever do a DOS format again, may I suggest the Format command with the /U switch.

The U means Unconditional. A friend of my Son-In-Law told me that erases everything.If you have a Western Digital Hard Drive, you can use the floppy diskette that comes in the retail box. There is a utility on that diskette that writes zeros to the entire drive. It takes a while, and I'm pretty sure it writes zeros the boot sectors also.

You can contact Western Digital and ask the techs that question.good luck. The LLF was frequently done in the good old days with older hard drive. You can not do an LLF on new hard drives. Only the manufacturer is capable of doing so.

However, LLF has been replace by zero-fill and is better than LLF. It writes zeros to every sector and will remove any nasty things.

BUT you have to do so for every physical hard drive and every partition. Also as wisely mentioned by others, if you stick an old CD, DVD, of floppy you recorded and it was infected - back she comes! Safest thing is to run the DOS format command (C:format 'drive letter') then erase the MBR (Master Boot Record) by C:format /mbr.

Then run any of the many utilities that do a zero-fill from a boot floppy or CD. Be sure your BIOS is set to boot from hard drive first, then CD, then floppy or you will never see these devices after formatting. These utilities are numerous and can be found via a Google search.

The 'little' things are sometimes the most important.' Be sure your BIOS is set to boot from hard drive first, then CD, then floppy or you will never see these devices after formatting. 'Those of us who need to ask the question, need the 'one and one are two'I am sure the answers were all brilliant but still left a lot of 'huh??s'I'll print them out and reread. By the way what's an 'OCD' or something like that in a later ans. From gsteele I think?

Can't flip back while writing this so I get to sound even dumber than I am-be nice now. First, the question is: what kind of formatting are we talking about?

Here's the deal: create a boot floppy with format, sys.com, and fdisk on it. Scan it with a virus checker to make sure it is clean and free of boot sector viruses. Take it out and set the write protect tab. Turn the computer OFF (clears RAM and clears on-drive disk cache). Boot the machine from the floppy (may require changing boot order in the BIOS screens). Run FDISK /MBR; this cleans and resets the boot sector of the hard drive. Note that boot loader and extended BIOS utilities will die, so you'll have to reinstall things like Toshiba's manager, WD, Maxtor, etc/ xbios utilities.

If you do, make sure you virus scan the disks from which you will be running these utilities before you start this process. Turn the computer OFF. Run FDISK and create (a) new bootable partition(s) (primary, DOS)on the hard drive. Turn the computer OFF. Reboot from floppy and FORMAT /s the new partition. Change the boot order in the BIOS and boot from the hard drive, then install whatever OS from CD. The drive map structure so created cannot have any executable virus code unless your virus checker was not up to date and the boot floppy or disk utility disks had viruses that the checker did not find.If you are concerned with bit patterns on the hard drive that reflect data that used to be on it, for business security reasons, that is a different issue.

To eliminate such patterns, you do need to run a sector overwrite utility that alternates ones and zeroes on successive passes. DoD requires a very large number of passes, depending on the security level of the data. As a practical alternative, Steve Gibson's Spinrite left running overnight on highest level deep pattern testing will vaporize low-level magnetic remnant patterns if done after the ones and zeroes overwrite mentioned above.

If you have OCD, throw the drive in a barrel with a hand grenade and buy a new one. A few suggestions to keep in mind:1- Install either norton ghost 2003 or norton ghost 9, depending on your O/S and hardware and back-up your hard disk next you format, preferably on a dvd media if possible, otherwise on a different partition.2- You could also install some sort of software such as 'GoBack' or 'RestoreIt'.3- Keep your antivirus up to date.4- Always try to have a reliable firewall from a reputable company. Windows XP firewall is not good enough.5- Enable automatic weekly virus scans of your entire computer.6- Avoid executable downloads (programs, etc.) from any P2P or unknown sources.7- Make sure not to share any of your drives on a network including a home network. Simply create ONE FOLDER through which you share whatever you want in order to keep a close watch on the data being accessed.I personally use norton ghost 9 very extensively and a full back-up of the entire operating system exists on rewritable dvd's.

For practical purposes, I have also installed 'RestoreIt' to reset my C Drive if or when necessary. This combination is fool proof and works excessively well for me. I never needed to reformat my computer after afterwards.Good Luck!

I have a Dell Dimension 8100 which is now 4 1/2yrs old.This computer does a system crash every 3-4wks. So in the time I have owned it you can compute how many re-installs I have done.I sanitize my HD before doing a 'clean re-install'. I do it as follows:1. Go into the BIOS and move CD drive to the firstposition.

It includes latest tools and features to create stunning models without professionals assistance. Sketchup pro 2017 serial number and authorization code crack.

Then I disable HD and FDD.2. To sanitize I use 'Wipe Drive' from Access Data(accessdata.com) this is one of many DOD type ofdisk cleaning programs. I set the program to doseven overwrite passes, then I go to sleep as ittakes all night, about 20hrs, okay sometimes Icant wait so I only set the program for threepasses which takes about four hrs, I think.3.

When this is done I go back into the BIOS andenable the HD and FDD.4. Next I re-install my OS which reformats the harddrive before re-installing the OS(Windows 2000Pro)Just a side note, my Apple IMac G4 17' flat panel hasnot crashed in the three years I have owned it and itwas $2300.00 versus my Dell which was $2600.00, my Apple has a bigger HD, firewire, usb ports, flat panelscreen and super combo drive which burns CDs and DVDs. The Apple costs less, does more and seems to be totally stable.So much for Dell, Intel and M$.Good luck, bob t. As this was my first post to this forum asking for help, I'm blown away. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and experience, tips and tricks. This been a real education for me. I did take the time to read through the excellent but lengthy discussions that Donna pointed me to in the first reply.

It was too much to fully absorb in one read but it was clear that this is a complicated and contentious subject. The good news is that there are clear effective fixes for the problem if it exists in a now have tools and procedures to restore a hard drive to as delivered by the manufacturer.The one thing that wasn't spelled out anywhere was how the virus or Trojan or worm was detected after each attempt at reformatting or at anytime other then by running an up-to-date VirusScan. Can Norton AntiVirus 2005 with the latest virus definitions see these polymorphic worms and viruses in the master boot record or sector zero or if they were written on the cylinder? Each of these things were reported but without explanation of how they were detected. If the virus scanner can see these things but doesn't find them, do I need to worry about them?The situation is further complicated by the introduction of malware, spy ware and other new inventions that a simple virus scanner does not look for. For these, I use Adaware and Spybot but from the threads even these programs are not sufficient. It appears that the only way to be certain that the system is clean is to periodically do mid-level reformatting and carefully overwrite everything on the hard drive.

Thankfully, from a practical perspective, it is probably only necessary to go to these lengths when you have an observable problem.Again, I greatly appreciate all of your wisdom, help and input on the subject.Thanks and God bless you, Baggy.

Hello, so I am in a little bit of a jam.I have a hard drive that came from a broken machine. Problem is the hard drive has a password on it.I can't do anything with the drive if I put it in the same model machine it came from and try to boot it it gives me a password prompt if I don't enter the right password twice then the machine halts.I tried to put it in another machine as an external drive and Windows does not detect it.

Go into command promptthen type 'diskpart'type 'list volume'then 'select volume xxx' (where xxx is the write protected problem drive)then type 'attributes volume clear readonly'Diskpart does not see the disk. I am at a loss. No matter what program I use I cannot get this drive to unlock.I tried the Ultimate CDA few of the programs see the actual drive, I can format the drive but when I pop it back into the X41 it still asks me for a password.I have no idea what to do anymore.I came across a program called atapwd but when I try to start it up it does not detect the drive.The drive is out of the machine and attached to my machine via a USB adapter.Am I missing something here?Why is it so hard to unlock this drive?

Ok so I finally got a little adapter to get the drive into a desktop.The drive as far as I know is from an X41. It is not in an X41 and in a regular machine.I tried atapwd and I cannot unlock the drive.

Cannot Format External Hard Drive

I am not sure what to do.I also tried a program called hdderase, basically this program tells me I can't do anything unless I have the password to the drive.So I am asking myself should I consider this drive garbage and assume that it cannot be unlocked or is there a brute force way of doing it or a software that i can load up that will unlock the drive.Im going to try the bucd again maybe i missed something. Unfortunately A-FF does not support the Hitachi drives.HDD Unluck detects the drive as locked but cannot unlock it for whatever reason.I looked at the technical specs for pc 3000 and it says that it supports unlocking of the drive but I'm not really sure how to download it.

Or how I would use it for that matter there seems to be a whole kit that comes with it.Anyone have any info on how to make this program work?Last time I checked an ORIGINAL PC-3000 (from Ace labs, NOT a cheaper Chinese 'clone') retailed for around US$ 3,000.00.The half @§§ed Chinese copies that usually come with obsolete software and NO support, should be available fo less than US$ 1,000.00.It's simply not worth it.A lot of firms will unlock your drive for fifty bucks or so, but the drive itself (since you don't care about the DATA) is worth maybe 20 US$.jaclaz.