bootable format floppy

50Twuncle

I am trying to find a freeware utility to securely wipe a hard disk - it must boot from floppy
Any suggestions ?

Toxteth_OGrady

http://download.cnet.com/Darik-s-Boot-and-Nuke-for-floppy-disks-and-USB/3000-2094_4-10911312.html

50Twuncle

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

http://download.cnet.com/Darik-s-Boot-and-Nuke-for-floppy-disks-and-USB/3000-2094_4-10911312.html

Since when did 1.64Mb fit on a floppy ?

Toxteth_OGrady

RTFM!!!!! :mad:

Next time I won't bother.

http://www.dban.org/node/15

BigRonW

21Twinkle wrote: »

Since when did 1.64Mb fit on a floppy ?

Microsoft Office used to optionally come on 28 floppies... of which 27 were formatted to 1.68 megabytes. That would have been around the time that Windows 95 launched (and CDs were new)... so 1.64 meg have fitted on an (appropriately pre-formatted) floppy for at LEAST 17 years. I seem to recal; that the 1.68 Megabyte format was known as "MSD", for "Microsoft Distribution Format". Upping the capacity of a floppy from 1.44 to 1.68 not only reduced the number of floppies they needed to supply, but in the majority of cases meant that the average office worker couldn't work out how to copy the disks from work to install the program on their home computer.

Mista_C

A standard 3.5" HD floppy disk (the kind we were most familiar with over the last 10 years) have an unformatted capacity of 2MB. .66MB is used for file system information which reduces available storage capacity to 1.44MB.
Manipulation of this is possible to allow for the needed 1.68MB and was common for some software, as pointed out by BigRonW.

I remember having a piece of software installed back in 1999 so I could format a 1.68MB for software distribution.