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failed new hd install; need to delete data

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i replaced my primary hd with a new hd. the ATI Home V10 backup and restore seemed to work fine, as computer booted fine after procedure. subsequently all reboots fail. Running ATI from the cd only gets as far as "reading partition"....never gets past there.

I am thinking that the new hd is bad. i want to return it to the store, but it is full of my 'new' restored data. how can i erase all the data on the 'new' hd, so that i can safely return it to the store?

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Boot from the Rescue CD and use the Add Disk option which will destroy the partitions. This is not fool proof but it would make recovery more difficult for anyone trying.

The CD has also this drive cleansing feature.

Alternatively, you can download software to securely erase disks

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/how-to-really-erase-a-hard-drive/129

Boot from the Rescue CD and use the Add Disk option which will destroy the partitions. This is not fool proof but it would make recovery more difficult for anyone trying.

Thanks, GroverH. i will try that process.

The CD has also this drive cleansing feature.

Alternatively, you can download software to securely erase disks

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/how-to-really-erase-a-hard-drive/129

Pat L - Thanks for reference. My computer doesn't have a floppy drive, so i can't boot to windows with this "new" drive connected. Can't think of a way of using this cool software.

Hi Jim,

Could you please remove our email addresses from your posts? The forum software does this and it opens the door to spammers that crawl this forum.

Thanks

I have another question re: this problem. is it possible that when i replaced my "old" hd (60gb) with the "new" hd (160gb), the ATI restore process was needing a hd of the same size? and this is why i didn't get a good restore?

No, your disk size has no bearing on your problem. There is a good chance the disk and errors had bad sector data errors and these errors were included in the backup and were restored. It is possible you may have some issues again. After the restore to the new disk, the very first thing you should do once it boots is to check the disk for errors. Run
CHKDSK C: /R
from a command prompt.

If your disk contains more partitions, run CHKDSK on them as well
CHKDSK X: /R ( SUBSTITUTE THE REAL DISK DRIVE LETTER FOR X

Which version of Windows is involved here?

As Pat stated in post #3, your TI REscue CD may include a drive cleansing option.

Another thing you might want to do is to validate the backup and this can be done from the CD.

thanks for reply....my old hd may well have problems, so maybe these bad sectors were copied? i did to a backup validation, which seemed ok. i will run chkdsk. if the problem is bad sectors, will chkdsk fix them? (WinXP)

i don't see a drive cleansing option on my Rescue CD. what should that look like?

Which version of Windows??

version 10 may not have one. It would be a listing under the Tools section. The validation just checks for the integrity of the backup--not the integrity of the data.

The reporting of disk errors will be found in the Windows Events, under application--date and time of checking will help you to find.

Another option for wiping your disk before returning would be

The below is also a free Partitioning utility which happens to have a "Wipe Disk" option.

The downloaded file has to be burnt onto a blank CD and it becomes a bootable CD.

http://www.partitionwizard.com/partition-wizard-bootable-cd.html