When buying a used laptop from an owner who used the D.O.D. format to erase previous information, does that make it more of a problem, to introduce a new OS through a new installation disk ? Also, would this be easier to apply the XP OS, over a disk that would have had a previous Vista OS. Please help, Bob
How-To Geek Forums » Geek Stuff
Tip: Click Here to Update All Your PC's Outdated Drivers (Sponsored Link)
D.O.D. Format make a problem ?
(5 posts)DoD is actually a good thing, and it will give you a fresh install of the next OS to your choosing, in your case, XP.
It doesn't give it any problems, you just need to make a new partition, then let Windows format it, then do the install.
Like I said, DoD actually makes the drive clean of all files that was on there previously. The new OS will have a fresh install, leaving no other trace of previous install...
Cheers
Hi, and thank you many times over. It seemed like a dumb question, but I was afraid of buying a laptop that had this D.O.D. format. I wanted to install XP, for many reasons, and didn't want to have to install Vista, because its previous OS. Thank you again, It's very appreciated !!!!!!!
Bobnoell, the D.O.D. specification for data erasure is not a format. It specifies the data to be written and the number of times to write different data patterns. The original intent was to prevent data retrieval by forensics. Today the US military no longer considers that erasure spec to be good enough and requires degaussing or destruction of the media. There is some info on this at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.....ty_Program
When it comes time to reinstall an OS, a drive that has been wiped will look blank whether it was wiped with the old milspec method or just written with all zeroes. None of these methods will cause problems or make it easier to reinstall.
Reply
You must log in to post.