automatically wiping an NT 4.0 (NTFS) system

[NEM1S1S]

My client has 5 old NT 4.0 PC's that are being retired, my client would like a fully automated boot disk that will wipe them automatically. Is there a list of switches that FDISK can use without any user intervention? remember, these are "stupid users" and don't know anything about PC's

[alphanumeric]

Format
Formats a disk for use with MS-Dos.

Syntax:
FORMAT drive: [/Switches]

Switches

/V[:label] Specifies a volume label. If the /V switch is omitted, or label is not specified, a prompt for a volume label is displayed after formatting is completed.
If no volume label is required, the prompt can be avoided by specifying: /V:""
If a label is specified and more than one disk is formatted in a session, all of the disks will be given the same volume label.
/Q "Quick" format of a previously formatted disk.
The disk's file allocation table (FAT) and root directory are deleted but it is not scanned for bad areas.
/S Copies system files to the formatted disk (to make a boot disk).
/B Allocates space on the formatted disk for system files.
/F:size Formats a disk to a capacity other than that for which the drive was designed.
size can be: 360, 720, 1.2, 1.44, 2.88.
/T:tracks Specifies the number of tracks per disk side.
/N:sectors Specifies the number of sectors per track.
/1 Formats a single side of a floppy disk.
/4 Formats a 5.25-inch 360K floppy disk in a high-density drive.
/8 Formats eight sectors per track
/C Tests clusters that are currently marked "bad." By default, if a disk contains clusters that have been marked as "bad", FORMAT does not retest the clusters; it simply leaves them marked "bad".
/U Unconditional format. This switch was instituted in Dos 5 along with the "Unformat" command. In Dos 7.x the Unformat command has been dropped and all formatting is unconditional. This switch is therefore redundant but presumably maintained so that batch files written with it will not fail.
/AUTOTEST Formatting proceeds without further user input or warning messages. As this will also work with hard drives, it is probably advisable to preconfigure the command in a batch file rather than using it directly from the command line. The AUTOEST switch can be used in conjunction with the /U, /S, and /F switches. It is not compatible with /Q (causing an error message) and /V is ignored.
/BACKUP Not sure what this does. Seems to be similar to /AUTOTEST except that it asks for a Volume label, and displays data on number of bytes available, etc. Haven't tried it with c: drive so don't know whether it warns before formatting a hard drive.
/SELECT Not sure what this does - but it seems to "unformat" a disk. Anyway, it renders the disk a "non-system disk" (which can be reformatted).
/Z:n Specifies the cluster size in multiples of 512 bytes. Valid values of n are:
n Cluster size n Cluster size
1 512 bytes 16 8K
2 1K 32 16K
4 2K 64 32K
8 4K




Notes:
Unless used with the /Q switch, FORMAT assumes that a floppy disk in a 3.5" drive is to be formatted at 1.44Mb. If the disk is 720 Kb, the /F:720 switch must be used or an error message results. If the /Q switch is used, FORMAT checks the existing format and will detect a disk formatted at 720 Kb.

By default, and unless the /Q switch is used, each sector on the disk is checked during the formatting process to ensure that the sector can properly store data. If a bad sector is located, it is marked and is not used.

When formatting is complete, a message is displayed showing the total disk space, any space marked as defective, the space used by the operating system (if any), and the space available for files.

When formatting a hard disk, a warning is first displayed:

C:\WINDOWS>Format c:

WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE x: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N)?





Although disks can be formatted in "non-standard" ways, this is not advised. Both disks and drives are designed for operation at their specified formats and faults will occur if used at other formats.

FORMAT cannot be used on a virtual drive created using the SUBST command.
Tricks
A fast way to reformat a floppy is:
ren /? | format /q/v:"" > nul
The ren /? part feeds, along with a load of redundant material, an "enter", followed by a "n, enter" in response to FORMAT's prompts. The >nul prevents the display of the somewhat messy mixed up output of the two commands.

Exit Codes:
0 The format operation was successful.
3 FORMAT was terminated by Ctrl-C before completion
4 A fatal error occurred (any error other than 0, 3, or 5).
5 The user pressed N in response to the prompt "Proceed with Format (Y/N)?" to stop the process.

File Details
File Name Default Location Dos Ver. Win Ver. Size Date Source
Format.com c:\windows\command 7.0 Win95 40 135 11/07/95 win95_02.cab
7.1 Win95 (OSR2.x) 49 543 24/08/96 win95_02.cab
Win98 49 5751 11/05/98 win98_28.cab
Win98 SE 49 5751 23/04/99 win98_25.cab

Superscripts denote which same size files, if any, are identical (using FC).


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Create or get a boot floppy and edit the autoexec.bat file with the format command and syntax. It will execute automatically when you boot from the floppy. Note this may not work on an ntfs partition you may have to use fdisk to delete the non dos partition.

Fdisk
FDISK is a menu driven utility used to configure and/or display information about the partitions on a hard disk.

Before a hard disk can be recognised by DOS (or any other compatible operating system), a Master Boot Record (MBR) must be established. The MBR defines areas of the disk to be:

a Primary Partition and/or
an Extended Partition.
In turn, an Extended Partition has to be designated as containing one or more Logical Dos Drives.

FDISK is the MS-DOS utility used to create an MBR by defining the size and nature of a hard drive's partitions. See "Using FDISK - the screens" for a screen-by-screen review of the program.

CAUTION: Using FDISK to modify or delete partitions on a hard drive renders all the data associated with that partition unavailable - ie. deleted!

Syntax:
To run the FDISK utility:
FDISK [/X]

To display a summary of the partition structure on all hard drives:
FDISK [/STATUS]

To create partitions without going through the standard FDISK menus:
FDISK [/X] drive [/PRI:size] [/EXT:size] [/LOG:size] [/PRMT | /Q]

To rewrite the Master Boot Record of the primary drive without altering the partition table information:
FDISK /MBR

To rewrite the Master Boot Record of any drive (drive) without altering the partition table information:
FDISK /CMBR drive

/X Ignores extended disk-access support. This switch may be needed if disk access or stack overflow errors occur
/MBR Re-writes the Master Boot Record of the primary drive based on the current disk structure. This switch can be used to repair a Master Boot Record that has been corrupted or damaged.
/CMBR drive Re-writes the Master Boot Record of drive (if present) based on the current disk structure. This switch can be used to repair a Master Boot Record that has been corrupted or damaged. 1
/PRI: size Creates a Primary Partition.
/EXT: size Creates an Extended Partition.
/LOG: size Creates a Logical DOS Volume in the Extended Partition.
drive The drive number.
size The size of the partition (in Mb or as a percentage of the available space).
/PRMT Prompts for action
/Q Quiet - no messages displayed during processing


Notes:
FDISK will only allow the creation of one Primary Partition and one Extended Partition. The Extended Partition can contain up to 23 Logical Dos Volumes. Actually, the limit is set by the way that Dos assigns drives letters A: to Z:. Drives A: and B: are reserved for floppy drives, and drive C: for the primary partition on the first hard drive leaving 23 letters for other drives. If the computer has a second hard-drive, CD-ROM, or any other drives, the maximum number of logical drives should be reduced accordingly.

The maximum partition size when using the FAT16 system is 2 Gb. Apparently the maximumum partition size when using the FAT32 system is 2000 Gb (not tested), BUT...
According to MS Knowledge Base article Q246818, no version of Win95 has support for hard disks larger than 32 Gb. I am not clear on where the fractures show but MicroSoft's suggested workaround is to upgrade to Win98 or WinME.

Another Knowledge Base article says that the version of FDISK distributed with Win98 and Win98SE will not correctly report the size of disks larger than 64 Gb. A patch is available for download that corrects this (see Q263044 for details). 2


FDISK does not allow you to change the size of a partition or logical drive directly. Instead it is necessary to delete the partition/logical drive and then create a new one of the required size.

Deleting a partition/logical drive will make all data on that partition/logical drive unavailable. However, data in other partitions/logical drives will not be affected.

If the combined partition sizes are less than the total capacity of the disk, the disk will work just fine - but at the reduced capacity.

If a partition/logical drive is specified that is greater than the available capacity, the size of the last partition/logical drive is automatically reduced to that of the available capacity.

FDISK works only on hard disks physically installed on your computer. Fdisk does not work on a drive formed by using the SUBST command nor does it work on a network or an Interlnk drive.

FDISK does not display information about compressed drives (these being, in reality, somewhat special hidden, read-only, system files). Furthermore, when a drive is compressed (using the Win95 Drivespace utility, at least) typically the compressed drive is given the letter of the old uncompressed drive, and the "host" drive is given a new letter. However, as far as FDISK is concerned, nothing has changed - ie. the new drive letter(s) are not recognised.

FDISK assigns consecutive drive letters (starting with C:) according to the following hierarchy:
Primary Partitions starting with Disk 1 and going down the list;
Logical Dos Drives in Extended Partitions starting with the Drives on Disk 1 and going down the list.
It is not possible to change this.


The undocumented switches (/PRI, /EXT, and /LOG) can be used from the command line or in a batch file and could be useful if a number of new drives are to be prepared similarly.

FDISK is not a particularly powerful utility in that the range of options offered is limited and there is not much scope for innovation. It is powerful in the sense that it can erase a lot of data very quickly!
File Details
File Name Default Location Dos Ver. Win Ver. Size Date Source
Fdisk.exe c:\windows\command 7.0 Win95 59 128 11/07/95 win95_02.cab
7.1 Win95 (OSR2.x) 63 116 24/08/96 win95_02.cab
Win98 63 900 11/05/98 Base5.cab
Win98 SE 63 916 23/04/99 Base5.cab

[Vernon Frazee]

http://www.ontrack.com/dataeraser/