
                   How To Hose An IDE Drive COMPLETELY!
                   -----------------------------------
                   
This is a re-type of a file sent to me by Douglas Anderson at Micro House, 
the folks who make the great DrivePro program (800-926-8299).  I was having
trouble hosing an IDE drive that had been DoubleSpace'd with DOS 6.0 and,
after hosing the partition with FDISK, discovered that the "secret" files
that make DoubleSpace work could not be erased.  What follows is an
incredibly lethal DEBUG program that is guaranteed to hose every living
thing on your hard drive.  All manufacturers recommend that you do NOT
low-level format an IDE drive, so this is the next best thing.  If you
need to erase unwanted information in hidden areas of your IDE drive
(which you can't low-level), here is a short routine that will erase the
boot sector (and everything else!) on the drive:

Enter DEBUG by typing DEBUG and pressing Enter.  This will display a simple
dash (-) instead of the normal C:> that you may be used to.  Enter the
lines listed below.  Press the Enter key at the end of each line.  Also,
on several of the lines below, DEBUG will respond with program address
numbers (these are enclosed in brackets below, but they will not appear
in brackets when you enter in the program).  In each case, the first four
of these eight digits (the ones to the left of the colon) are of no
significance, so they are represented with question marks.  The second
four digits, on the other hand, ARE important.  If the numbers you get
do NOT match these, press Q (Quit) at the next line, reboot and try again.


     A CS:100
     [????:0100] MOV AX,301
     [????:0103] MOV BX,200
     [????:0106] MOV CX,1
     [????:0109] MOV DX,80
     [????:010C] INT 13
     [????:010E] INT 20
     [????:0110] [Enter]
     G
     

Once you have entered this program (the G runs it), wait a few minutes or
until you hear the drive stop, and press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot.  You will
then be able to run FDISK and then FORMAT the drive.

(Thanks again to Douglas T. Anderson and the good folks at Micro House)

                                              Jim Moran
                                              Golden Gate Computer Society
                                              BBS:  (415) 927-1216
                                              Info: (415) 927-2909
                                              

