Re: Can I erase/format a Windows HD on the Mac ?

Chu-En Ginsberg <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So if I pull the drive and stick it in a Firewire (or USB) caddy which i
have, can I use my G4 Powerbook + Disk utility or whatever to clean it
up and format it in such a way that if anyone buys the lappy and fixes
the connection, that it will boot up OK in windows or install cleanly.

Thanks for any tips

If it's formatted as NTFS, then no - FAT32 is OK.

And it's difficult to set it up to boot into Windows from a vanilla Mac.
Besides which you will need a Windows license and that will cost more
than the laptop/drive are worth.

I've encountered something similar recently. THe computer I was using
died, and I tried to move the drive to another laptop. I could do this,
but on startup it demands that since I have moved the drive to another
set of hardware that I should pay Microsoft £239 for the pleasure.

I'd suggest formatting the drive at least, although that doesn't erase
data. I can get data back from a formatted drive fairly easily. To do a
good job you need to overwrite the data on the drive at least once, and
preferably several times.

If you 10.3.x onwards you can use Erase from the disk utility to
properly erase the disk. Then I'd formatting it as FAT32 and forget
about installing Windows.

TBH paranoia rules for me. Drives are cheap so I destroy them physically
with a hammer and a blow torch, or alternatively do as you suggest put
them in a caddy and use them as yet another external drive. 2.5 in USB2
caddies cost about £11, Firewire ones a little more.
.

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