How To Fully Erase Hard Drive (Including Hidden Files)
Nov 18, 2012
I am trying to completely erase everything from my hard drive (windows are not installed on that hard drive). So is everything deleted by going to the hard drive and right click -> format? or does this do what a regular Windows 7 format does? I mean to completely erase all hidden files that can be restored and such.
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Oct 7, 2012
I have a PC with a SSD C:/ drive that I use for program files only. I also have several other hard drives used for music, photos, etc... If I click on properties for my C drive, I see that 66GB of the total 96GB is used. That seemed high for just program files so I expanded the view and looked at each one.
Windows - 22.3GB
Users - 6.87GB
Prog 86 - 2.39
Prog - 0
NVidia - 207MB
Miller - 63.5MB
So you can see that I can only see about 33GB of what is supposed to be 65.9GB used. How can I see what is eating up the rest of the space? I went into Ctl Panel and clicked on View Hidden Files but still only see about half of what the system says in on the disk.
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Sep 15, 2011
My portable hard drive is showing all the hidden files and folders on it (the ones prefixed with ".", but not the System Information folder, interestingly). I don't have this trouble with any other drives, or elsewhere on my computer, so it seems somehow to be associated with this specific drive.Of course I check to make sure that "Show hidden files and folders" is turned off.
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Nov 25, 2012
i just bought a new computer running windows 7 home edition. my question is, can windows 7 make an entire image of my hard drive including (and this important) the recovery partition? If It can can anyone please tell me how. i need to have a complete backup of my hard drive in case of hard drive failure.
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Jan 20, 2013
I have a dell dimension 9100. I have two drives on it, a ~160gb drive that came with it with xp, and a 500gb drive with win7. I put the win7 in myself and had been using that. Finally, I decided to erase the old drive with xp on to install linux on it. After erasing the old drive, my computer won't start up. It says it cant find sata 1 or 3. I've tried switching the cables hooking up to it but that doesn't help. If I push continue after it tells me how it can't find them, it says 'loading pbr for descriptor 2...done' and stays there. I did not erase windows 7,
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Apr 19, 2012
i was wondering if anyone has any programs they could recommend to use to wipe a hard drive clean before reinstalling windows 7, I noticed you have this CCleaner 3 link on here CCleaner - Download.com If i put that on a disk and started it up as i would to reinstall can that wipe the disk clean?
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Jul 15, 2010
I intend to sell my computer soon, but before doing so I'd like to clear the hard drive and remove all my personal data. I've done a bit of research on the topic and found a few programs (DBAN, Eraser) that seem to do this. I'm not exactly sure which program is best though, or what exactly they do. I would also like to reinstall Windows 7 after erasing the hard drive. However, my copy of Windows 7 is an upgrade from the computer's original OS, Windows Vista. The computer didn't come with any system recovery or OS install disks so I'm not sure how to boot and install and OS after erasing everything. Will I be able to just put in the Windows 7 upgrade disk and install it? (I can't imagine it could be that simple, but who knows!) I do kind of remember a "clean install option" when I upgraded - would that be the same as clearing the hard drive and reinstalling?
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Mar 8, 2011
How I can delete everything off of my hard drive so I can reinstall windows 7?
Specs:
AMD Phenom II x2 550
MSI 870A-G55
MSI Hawk ATI HD 5770
Antec TP-550 550w PSU
WD Cavier Black 750GB
Lite-On DVD Burner
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Jan 28, 2013
How to full format my laptop hard drive. I have already Re install windows 7 in E: drive. Previously I have win-7 in C: drive after encounter some problems, Re-install new Windows 7 but that time I didn't format the hard disk that's why its install in drive E. Now when start the up of the lap top both selection are coming will start with old win or new win-7...and having some trouble with my windows 7 that's why I want to full format the hard dive without bootable disk and install new win-7.
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Oct 11, 2012
My folders on my hard drive are hidden (the only way I can view them is through Folder and Search Options in Organise). I can not unhide. See this picture for details (it shows ONE of my folders in my Hard Drive that is hidden): Image - TinyPic - Free Image Hosting, Photo Sharing & Video Hosting.How do I unhide these folders?
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Apr 30, 2012
I have backed up all the files and emails from a faulty hard drive before inserting a new one and setting up Windows on it. However, because the drive was in such a bad way, I did't run Outlook to extract the email account settings - and now realise that these are hidden in the registry. I have tried importing the registry files (after doing some research on this), but cannot find the registry section which contains it.
Now that the the new drive is fully running (apart from the email account settings) - Windows Vista upgraded to Windows 7 - would it be too risky to re-insert the drive in the laptop to run Outlook and get the settings recorded ? I am concerned that it will cause error messages when I re-insert the brand new drive. I have thought about booting up a computer from the faulty drive, but think it may refuse to load because it's a different PC to one it came out of (Dell XPS M1530) - is this the case ?
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Aug 1, 2012
When we install windows 7 our E drive is hidden.
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Apr 8, 2012
A folder has disappeared from an external hard drive, as confirmed by plugging it into another computer and checking, searching for several filenames it should contain on all possible drives (with hidden files shown), and searches with Recuva and testdisk of deleted files. There is no discrepancy between the size of the remaining folders and the reported size of the folder that contained it along with the remaining folders.
The drive in question is a 2TB WD Mybook external that may be showing its age- another folder had a cyclic redundancy check error, and the folder in question developed one several weeks later. I'm making plans to move my data off and have already duplicated the most important files on it.When the folder developed the CRC error mentioned in the previous paragraph, I ran scandisk. It was after running that utility that I found it had disappeared, so that is the most likely reason. However, the other folder remained (with error unfixed, eventually resolved by using testdisk to copy the folder to another drive.)
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Sep 11, 2011
Some of my important system files are no longer hidden and I can't hide them even with the Command Prompt "attrib" command. Files such as bootmgr and ntldr are shown and I can't hide them. Also, show Protected System files is unchecked and show hidden files is also unchecked so they shouldn't be showing. I tried to re-add their system file attribute but I keep getting an "Access Denied" error in CMD and I do not have user account control on and I'm on a Default Administrator Account.
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Dec 24, 2011
I have a virus infected sata hard drive with windows 7 on it. It has the win 7 anti virus 2012 on it, and it's a cybercriminal virus. I have lots of files I want to transfer to the new sata drive. I already have windows 7 installed on the new drive. How do I get the files from the bad drive to the new one?
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Jan 21, 2013
I have a USB Webcam 6.1.7601.17514 from Microsoft installed on a Fujitsu Laptop (Windows 7 ) and I want to copy and install it on another Fujitsu laptop (Windows 7).The other laptop the camera is not working and there is no webcam driver installed.
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Mar 24, 2012
I copied some files from a DVD that was having some reading errors to my pendrive. Somehow, a few files have strange characters at the end of the file name. I cannot rename or erase this files from my pendrive. Each time I try, I have this error message: "The file name you specified is not valid or too long. Specify a different name."
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Feb 6, 2013
I am running Windows 7 and had problems where user profile service would not load. I followed instructions saying to open in safe mode and delete profile files ending .bak via the regeditor.Now it boots up but all the user information is gone, desktop icons etc. The worst is all my microsoft outlook messages which contained hundreds of important messages. I can't seem to find the pst file.I'm assuming it's on the computer somewhere? I've done a search of the computer for *.pst and haven't found anything
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Feb 16, 2011
I Upgraded My Windows7 Starter To Ultimate Recently And Everything Was Going Fine, But I Wasn't Happy With The Disk Space Because I Had Ubuntu As Second OS And I Wanted More Space For Win7. ( Ubuntu Was In The same Partition As Win7 C: ). I Searched For Ways Of Increasing The Size Of The Partition But I Didn't Understood Them So I Deleted Ubuntu. The Space Wasn't Recovered (Unallocated Space) So I Still Searched For Ways Of Making The Partition Size Bigger And i Found a Way That Said If You Right Clicked The Gray Square Of Disk Utility And Click a Phrase That i Don't Remember You Can Show the "Resize" Option Of the Partition.i Did That and i Received a Notification Dialog That Said That Said That If i Do That All The Partitions (OS's, Files, And Drivers) Would Be Deleted And I Like A DUMB Clicked "Ok" At Next Restart There Was No Boot Manager, The Boot Just Loaded Again And Again. So I Installed Ubuntu Using a Bootable USB (Current OS) And There Was No "Install Alongside Other OS" Option. I Tried To Run Windows 7 Setup Again Using a Bootable USB, But I Get Stuck at The Part That You Must Select The Drivers Needed So Windows Could Read The Partitions. I Have The CD With The Drivers But i Have a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012 Netbook With No CD Drive So i Downloaded All The Drivers That the Factory Installs From Dell.com And Saved It on A USB But the Windows 7 Setup Doesn't Recognize The Drivers, It Only Recognize The USB But Not It Contents(Drivers).I Want To Keep Using Windows 7 And All Programs i Need Windows But It Seems Like Ubuntu Is My Only Option.
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May 22, 2010
Is there a way to make SFC use the Windows 7 DVD for files to be replaced instead of the files on the hard drive?
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Feb 27, 2011
how do i format my c drive
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May 3, 2010
The Easy Transfer created 7 .mig files of which only 3 have been moved from my external hard drive to my C drive.All 7 are still in the external hard drive including the 3 in the C drive.How do I get them to finish transferring to my C drive.This is what I have to do-right?
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Dec 5, 2011
I have a failed hard drive that I'd like to send back to get replaced but obviously want all my data wiped first. The problem is that the drive has failed so miserably that it won't even mount to any system in order to perform any sort of wiping. I've connected it to my system directly, via a USB to IDE adapter, and via an eSATA adapter in both Windows and Linux to no avail. Sometimes it will show up in the Device Manager under Hard Drives, but that's as far as it gets - it's never assigned a letter and doesn't show up in Disk Manager. It doesn't show up in Ubuntu when I perform an fdisk either so I can't perform a DD.
This is a bit of a catch 22 as the hard drive has failed to the point where it can't be read, but I'm not sure what measures are going to be employed to attempt to validate and read the data at the manufacturer when they test it for failure. If the drive all of a sudden starts working, there is too much personal data on there for me to just hope doesn't turn up.
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Apr 4, 2012
A buggy drive management tool erased my SECOND (not boot) hard drive's MBR and replaced it with a completely bogus and useless GPT.My actual partitions should be intact, and I am optimistic that partition recovery tools would be able to find them and restore the original partition table. However, they won't work, as long as the drive is identified as a GPT disk
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Mar 13, 2012
I would like to remove the 30 or so files that are now showing on my desktop since selecting to "Show Hidden files"They are all old excel and word documents but not sure if removing them would cause an issue What are they/how are they created?I'm on Windows 7 Home Premium x64 and Office 2007
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Feb 26, 2011
my wife broke our laptop, i had all of my music on that hard drive and hadnt yet backed it up. the hard drive is still good, so i bought an external hard drive enclosure and put the old hard drive in it. i hooked it up, but am not able to get to any of my files off of it. computer recognizes it is there, shows folders, but wont/cant read files. wont open itunes or any other programs i had on it.the old drive was in windows vista, new computer is windows 7. does that matter?what do i need to do?
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Jul 17, 2012
I have a brand new set up that is running windows 7 64 bit on a ASrock H61M-GE, supports UEFI (not sure if it is automatically enabled) with a 3TB hdd that is the boot drive. There are no other hard drives available on the computer. Windows has only recognized 1.99TB of the drive in the OS, the other 7XXGB are unallocated. I would like this drive to be in "one piece" and be booted from. How should I go about making this work?
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Feb 23, 2012
I am using Windows 7 OS. I had two logical partitions, E & F. I saw an unallocated free space on my disk. I tried to to mount unallocated drive to another
logical drive , it asked for the folder,where I wanted to mount I gave one folder in E drive. it asked if i want to format...i said
no. and thats all,process completed! And just then I saw there was no other logical drive left...neither E nor F. Now I can see only C drive and nothing else. how to recover my hard drive and the files now?
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Feb 9, 2012
I know there is a command in dos that you could you use to list all files on a hard drive
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May 28, 2011
I am a salesman in a tech department of an office supply store, and I had a customer issue stump me today. She had an external drive with lots of files on it she wanted to access. I took the drive, plugged it into a Windows 7 machine (HP quad), and all of the files appeared, no problem. But, then I plugged the seagate drive into her new Toshiba laptop (also Win 7), and only some of the files appeared. Missing were all photo files, and many other types. I could not figure out why some were missing and some showing. I took the drive to a third computer with Win 7, an MSI all-in-one, and behold: files were missing. Now it seemed almost arbitrary. Could it be a matter of some Windows updates not yet installed? Why would the exact same drive work differently on three different computers in regard which files were seen and accessible? None were "hidden" files.
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Dec 10, 2009
I just bought a new computer, i7 860 and have put 7 x64 on it.
my motherboard is ausus p7p55d and has one ide socket on the board.
I was using this socket for my cd and dvd drives but I have detached them so I can plug in my old IDE hard drive.
I was using the IDE drive just 2 days ago in my old system.
Sometimes when I boot up the drive is seen and sometimes not.
when the drive is seen I try and copy some files over to my new sata drive I have in the new system. some of the files copy over but the the IDE drive always gets stuck. when I try to cancel the copy windows stops responding partially and I cant get out of the copy window and the old IDE hard drive explorer window.
So I restart windows and normally it now doesn't see the IDE drive.
What is going wrong?
How do I get my files off this hard drive?
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