Urgent Help Required - Formatting Hard Drive

[fallyhag]

Hi forum

I have a Digital DECpc 425SE Laptop which has a broken screen so I am unable to use the laptop. Naturally I have done the insurance thing and hope to receive a new one asp. The pain is that the Insurance company want the old one before they give me the new one, understandably. The trouble I now have is that I dont want them to get it with my files on.

My question is how do I go about formatting a hard drive on the laptop without the use of my screen?

Thanks in advance for any help

Fallyhag

 

[fallyhag]

Further to my last

Is there a way of getting my Desktop monitor to work on the Laptop, even though I cant see the laptop screen to change the settings?

Really do need help asap.

Fallyhag

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Your laptop shoud have a monitor out port, so you could connect it to a different monitor very easily.

Alternatively, if you have a PC, you can get a cable quite cheaply which will connect the laptop hard drive to the PCs IDE channel.

If you really need to wipe that disk, don't just format it, use a low-level formatter to write blocks of 1's and 0's. This will make the data much harder to recover.

Hope this helps. CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[fallyhag]

I tried to connect the laptop to the Desktop Monitor but I just get a blank screen. I assume that it is getting a signal coz the monitor stays active but I see nothing.

You mentioned connecting the laptop to the PC, how would I do that? I have a serial connector that I used with Laplink but now the screen is no good I am now stumped?

Any advice?

Fallyhag

 

[gporter]

When you connect your laptop and monitor together usually there is a sequnce of keys you need to depress. fn (function) ans f5. Refer to your laptop user guide and it should tell you.

 

[garwain]

Another method could be you just keep the HDD (please store it in a anti-static container), and notify them about that telling them to ship the replacement to you without a HDD as well... then pop in the old HDD and away you go. However if there is a difference in hardware between the old system and the new, you'll probably have to re-install your OS at that point.

 

[edfair]

Or mount the HD in another system, either a laptop or a desktop with an adapter kit. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[fallyhag]

The Laptop was too old to play the swap game so I took the other advice and just removed the laptop Hard drive.

No doubt the insurance company will want that too but they aint getting it.

Thanks for all the advice forum

Fallyhag

 

[ceh4702]

you could probably just make up a boot disk on a floppy with a command to do the low level format with some command that beeps three times before it starts and 5 times after it finishes. When it is done, you will hear the beeps. Could just make it a dos system disk. It will boot up, but they will not see anything. You just put the format command in autoexec.bat and that will always run. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[zoeythecat]

First, get a Monitor that you can hook up to the video port of the laptop. Boot up the laptop with this Monitor hooked up to the laptop. On boot up you may have to hit an "Fn Key" for the video to appear on this. Every laptop is different. I know on my Dell laptop I would have to hit the (fn = f8 key). Look for a key that has words like "crt/lcd".

I assume you know how to format the system?

Good luck