I plan to use Active Kill Disk to destroy everything on a hard drive (including MBR). Kill Disk gives you the option to "Initialize after Kill" so the dive can be used again. This does not include Formatting per the manual.

I know that an MBR is needed so the drive can be recognized.

Does Initializing the drive create an MBR?

Thank You...

PS: I know there are ways to wipe a drive without deleting the MBR, but I want to include the MBR in the kill.

This should help in your quest for knowlage. Take a look.

The Master Boot Record (MBR) and What it Does (http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/master_boot_record.htm)

Thanks. That IS a lot of info on the MBR. I'll need to reread it a few times.

My question remains, however. When a completely blank drive is "INITIALIZED" does this create an MBR?

Thanks again...

What OS are you using?

XP Home SP3

Yes it should give you the option of creating MBR. On newer ones like vista or 7 it has more choices.

Thanks. I'm not using Windows to create the MBR. I'm using Active Kill Disk, which gives you the option to Initialize after the Kill (so the drive can be recognized by the PC).

I just want to know, in general terms, if I can expect this Initializing (by Active Kill Disk) will create the MBR. It doesn't say that specifically in their literature. It just says that Initializing makes the drive recognizable.

Here is a link to Active Kill Disk: http://www.killdisk.com/

It seems like it would have to create a MBR if it leaves the disk in a state that it can be see or read by a Windows based OS.

I do not know anything about Kill Disk but I am assuming in order for it to be recognized by a Windows Install it would have to have an MBR. Now, I am also assuming that Kill Disk does this because why would they make a program that wipes a drive and leaves it unusable?

Once recognziable Windows will format and install the OS on the partition etc...

I will do a little research on this matter.

Active@ Kill Disk. Reformat Hard Drive. Cleaning Hard Drive.Secure Deletion. (http://www.killdisk.com/killdisk-faq.htm)

After reading the FAQ it seems like after the disc is initialized you just need to format the disc and you're all set to reuse... so once killdisk is ran and you select initialize it creates the MBR and you can continue to reinstall an OS.

Thanks for the feedback. You are correct. Initializing the disk, does create the MBR.

I wrote to LSoft, the company that developed the Kill Disk software, and this is there detailed response about initializing a disk after a "kill".

Initializing a disk basically means writing to sector 0, which, among other things, contains Master Boot Record (MBR). An MBR contains the partition information for the disk. Initializing a disk does not create partitions. If you do a kill on a physical disk, you will need to initialize it, create partitions, and format them. If you do a kill on a logical disk, you just need to re-format, as the MBR will not be overwritten.