how to delete mbr

[therealdeal316]

How can I delete the mbr part of my hard drive? I have tried everything i know of, including fdisk, and the western digital utilities.

 

[tiebird321]

google search
"low level IDE format utility"
and click on i'm fealing lucky

good luck

 

[Sertys]

Ever tried fdisk /mbr or fixmbr(under XP recovery console)? They do the trick. Use a linux boot cd and try dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 .

 

[spectrum]

Just a word of caution on using fdisk /mbr
make sure the drive you want to wipe the boot sector on is on IDE0 and set as master. That is the drive it will wipe the mbr on. An even safer solution would be to remove any other hard drives from the config before doing it. Wiping the wrong MBR is a PAIT - been there done that.

 

[Ice Czar]

hmmm

actually this might not be all that simple
the Western Digital Utilities (DataLifeguard) has a zero utility (fake low level format)

and fdisk or recovery console fixmbr simply rewrites it
but it might not get rid of say a dynamic drive overlay (software drive translation)

is that the issue? did you use a DDO and cant get your drive to be recognized at it full capacity?

if not in the 3rd party software Id recommend Autoclave or DBAN
both are on the http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

[therealdeal316]

well my drive is a SATA drive, so I can't put it on IDE0, second, I have tried all of those ideas so far, The linux disk did nothing. If fact the reason I want to clear the mbr is because I had two failed Linux installs on this drive, and now when I do a virus scan, norton scans 4 mbr's on this drive.

 

[Ice Czar]

Autoclave or DBAN

 

[therealdeal316]

I am running autoclave at level 5 right now, assuming it doesn't work, then what?