We are getting rid of about 2000 machines from our organization. We would like to clean the drives before we get rid of the machines. We don't want to just format them, but actually overwrite the data. Is there any utility you all would recommend that will overwrite the data on the hard drives that will run in a task sequence? Thanks

Never tried it but maybe you could add the nuke part of boot and nuke into PE, boot the computer from PE and run that. One pass should do it. Alternatively just rip the drives out and crush or shred them. John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

You can't do this effectively, just like in the old days of DOS you canot format the drive you are running from. Eventually memory and disk reads will catch up to you and you might not have a 100% erased drive. To truley ensure you wiped the disk it is recommended that you boot from USB,CD,DISK and run a wipe tool. We use DBAN but that doesn't get the results you wanted because it too must be booted from external media. http://www.sccm-tools.com http://sms-hints-tricks.blogspot.com

MDOP has a utility for that. Do you have access to Microsoft Desktop Optimazation Pack - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/mdop/default.aspx You can use the DaRT tool to wipe the drives.Kent Agerlund | My blogs: http://blog.coretech.dk/author/kea/ and http://scug.dk/ | Twitter @Agerlund | Linkedin: /kentagerlund

I'll have to see about MDOP. I know last year when we were using Novell and Zenworks, we were able to create a boot menu to choose standard imaging or a DBAN boot. I'm wondering if a similar functionality would be available with WDS or not.

your can deploy DaRT using WDS, no problem.Kent Agerlund | My blogs: http://blog.coretech.dk/author/kea/ and http://scug.dk/ | Twitter @Agerlund | Linkedin: /kentagerlund

So, Can you create a boot image that SCCM would manage for task sequences from this DART util? I have an .iso that has the disk wipe. So I'm thinking I will have to convert the .iso to a .wim and use that wim as a bood image for sccm. Im just looking for some clarification because I have had wds blow up multiple times and it is never fun. Thanks.

your can deploy DaRT using WDS, no problem. Kent Agerlund | My blogs: http://blog.coretech.dk/author/kea/ and http://scug.dk/ | Twitter @Agerlund | Linkedin: /kentagerlund I was going to suggest trying to add boot and nuke to WDS but I assumed he had the PSP installed which cripples WDS for everything except OSD. Just one reason I've never been a big fan of the PSP. John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

Well, I have created a new custom Boot image with DiskWipe.exe and msdartdmn.dll on it. I can boot it up as if I were to image the machine, hit F8 to bring up the command line and run DiskWipe and it appears to be working... So now I should be able to just create a new Task Sequence that launches diskwipe. I would like to automate this further if possible. Are there command line switches for DiskWipe? Currently, I have to choose the volume, format option, and then type in the volume name. But I would like to not have to type anything in if it is run via a task sequence. TIA

In a final note, we bailed on DiskWipe since I couldn't find any documentation on an automated command to wipe the drives. We ended up resorting to DBAN like we used to have in our Pre-AD environment. The solution was to add a DBAN folder on the boot image that contains DBAN as well as a batch file that will repartition the drive to a 500 mb fat32 partition on the local C drive. Then, the batch file copies DBan to the C drive and issues a command to reboot. The machine reboots, launches DBAN and wipes the entire hard drive as specified in the DBAN config file. So DBAN is still an option for you all if you are needing to wipe a ton of machines. Thanks!

Helly spidey24, I would have a question for you... I am able to create the 500mb Fat32 partition and to copy the files of the DBAN ISO in C:\DBAN but when I reboot the computer, I cannot get it to boot to deban, it just says Incorrect file system... I think that my C:\ partition must not be bootable so that's why it doesn't want to load DBAN ... do you have any idea of what I could be missing ? Thanks in advance!