A hard drive has to contain a 'file system' so that it can function with an
operating system software such as windows or linux.  'File systems' are not
compatible between operating systems unless the o/s supplies legacy support,
like win98 supported DOS.

Fdisk and format are two command programs that when used in conjunction,
construct a Microsoft FAT type file system on a hard drive.  They do not
erase the whole drive, just those small parts of it used for defining the
disk structure, sort of like the table of contents.  Once this is done, no
files can be seen by or have any effect on the operating system, which I
assume is windows in your case.  Windows does not 'read the disk' it reads
the file system.  Once the file system has been removed and recreated, its
empty, even if the data is still magentically recorded on the disk.

This leaves me agreeing with Tom Simpson, as I too am puzzled about what you
might be refering to. If you fdisked the drive, there can't be anything
interfering with your dsl.  You should give us more information about which
drive (drive c: ?) you want to erase, and how you tried to erase it.

As for the /u command on format, it stands for 'unconditional'.  Its
function is obsolete starting with win95.  What it did was insure that the
old dos unformat command would fail by preventing format from saving some
information about the file system before it recreated it.  Before win95, the
default format command was to save this information, which could be used by
unformat to bring back the old file system.  Since the old unformat command
is no longer supported, all format operations are by default '/u'.  It never
caused format to write 1's or 0's to the entire disk.

If you really want to write 0's to every byte on the drive, there are
programs you can find with a google search that will do this.
Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Simpson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 4:42 AM

I'm sorry that I don't know what files would be causing your problem.
You might want to talk to your service provider to see if they can offer
some assistance with that.

I can tell you how to format the drive, though. It actually writes ones
to the drive (not zeros), but either way, at the A: prompt, type "format
c: /u", without the quotes, of course. This will be sufficient for
getting rid of everything.

   Tom


Kim Henriquez wrote:
>
> How do I write zeros to my hard drive. I have done an fdisk to remove all
my files, but it seems that there are still some left. Also, because of
these files, it causing my DSL connection to lag. If possible, maybe someone
can tell me what these files are and how I can remove them if they are ever
saved to my computer again so I will not have to format each time.

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