Mobile Partitions

Completely Erase a Portable Hard Drive?

Hi. I own a Western Digital 400GB My Passport Essential Hard Drive and recently my files have just been scattered everywhere, I've got virus though and through, and so I decided that on a virus free computer (so it doesn't just get re-infected) I am going to completely erase the hard drive to a non-recoverable state. (Kind of in the same way that DBAN does to your hard drives - except I can't use DBAN because it wipes all detected drives.) Now I have three questions... 1. What is a software I can use to do the wipe? (Free preferably but I am willing to pay) 2. Will I have to use some kind of software to recreate the partitions on the drive before it will be detected, etc...(For this, I believe I can just use the WD Fat32 Formatter provided on their website, but I would like to hear your suggestions too...) 3. If I format the drive to say Fat32, will it be recognized (or even able to support files from) a computer that has a NTFS encoded hard drive...? Formatting Is NOT what I am asking about, formatting data will not securely erase it.

Public Comments

1. A magnet.... But seriously, just use the partitioning tools on vista. Partitioning will completely wipe it. And why don't u just re-format it to NTFS??
2. If connected to the computer, open my computer, left click for properties and tell Windows to format the hard drive.
3. 1. You can use Active Kill Disk, free http://download.cnet.com/Active-Kill-Disk-Hard-Drive-Eraser/3000-2092_4-10073508.html 2. If you need to recreate partition, use Partition Manager. http://download.cnet.com/Easeus-Partition-Manager-Home-Edition/3000-2248_4-10863346.html 3. FAT32 will still be recognized by your NFTS based Windows
4. The partitioning, and reformatting tools, built into windows, are in the computer management program, under storage \ disk management. That programs address is: C:\Windows\System32\compmgmt.msc