Infected drives: low level formatting or Boot and Nuke ?

[john D]

What is the surest way to erase viruses and malwares : low level formatting or Boot and Nuke ?

I already tried 7 passes on a hard drive and it didn't succeed.

[Niclo Iste]

What inclines you to think you have an infection?

[Ferrit]

I am not sure what the problem is but i cannot imagine anything surviving what you have done unless you have another harddrive that s attached that it can hide on.
What is it exactly that you think survives this Boot anbd Nuke and what makes you think this?

[john D]

I erased only a partition on the drive, and saw the virus comeback.
This time i would want to erase the whole drive, and would rather use the best method.

[Ferrit]

Well the short answer is any low level will kill off anything in the first pass.
Period.
I have no idea about boot and nuke.
I use Wipe,Zap, and sometimes the manufacturers utilities

[Platypus]

Either will be satisfactory. A drive manufacturer's zero-fill utility (sometimes called low-level format, although it isn't) or the various ones like DBAN, Zap, Eraser etc will overwrite any virus existing on the drive. The utility must be run from a known virus-free environment, and the drive likewise prepared in a non-infected environment, or directly partition the drive and re-load the OS from non-infectable media ie manufactured CD/DVD.

What are you meaning when you say 7 "passes" on a hard drive didn't succeed? Is it in reference to the system in this topic:

http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=83455

[john D]

What are you meaning when you say 7 "passes" on a hard drive didn't succeed? Is it in reference to the system in this topic:

http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=83455

Yes.
And it isn't the first time it happened to me while using R'Wipe&Clean 7 passes; i remember reading on some forums there exists malware resisting even low level formatting; what are people's experience here ?

[CCT]

The Canadian Government uses DBan ( http://www.dban.org/ ).

Don't you wish everyone did?

[slgrieb]

John, there are some bugs that can survive a standard drive format, but not deleting all the partitions on a drive, then reformatting or alternatively, using utilities like DBan or some of the others Platypus mentioned. You have to observe the guidelines he gave you, but that should clean you up just fine.

[Platypus]

using R'Wipe&Clean

R-Wipe&Clean is a utility for secure deletion of traceable data to ensure privacy. As far as I'm aware it won't do anything that would help in dealing with malware.