Does format remove a virus from hard drive

[needhelp]

I just got to wondering if formatting the hard drive really gets rid of a virus on the actual hard drive. I got to wondering about this recently cos I reformatted my hard drive and shortly afterwards I found this program that claimed it was able to reclaim lost files etc. So for the heck of it I ran the program and sure enough it showed a list of all the files that had been on my computer before I reformatted it. I tried to redeem some of the files and save them to a floppy disk. The files was actually saved to the floppy but when I opened it there was only part of the file intact. I actually opened one of the files that was a jpeg picture and sure enough part of the picture came up. I got part of a face in the picture.
This is what got me to thinking that, if this is the case,(and it is the case) if I had a virus on the hard drive and reformatted the hard drive to get rid of the virus. Does it in fact get rid of it or just defragment the file and make it inactive or what?
Obviously the whole drive is not wiped as such. So what actually happens and in that case is it possible for a virus to still be active on the hard drive after you reformat it.

[Nuclear Krusader]

AFAIK, yes, formatting a drive removes viruses in it. But what really happens when you do a high level format is that the info is hidden from the OS, but it's still there.

You wanna get rid of the info completely (especially when you are about to sell or donate a PC) download the HD's manufacturer diagnostic utility and do a zero fill. This wipes out the info completely.

[MonkeyBlitch]

Correct me if im wrong but doesn't formating your hdd remove everything stored?

[scott_d]

A low level format does, like Nuclear said. But in a high level format, everything is still there somewehre, its just covered up and you cant see it.

[avx]

I thought the best policy when selling an old PC was to take out the old HD and smash it with a hammer...?

Cause no matter what you do info can be found on it...is that right?

[RayH]

A low level format should be sufficient unless you have something on the hard drive really top secret.

[Spyda]

The FBI standard for deleting a file is overwriting it 27 times

[LawyerRon]

A zero-fill utility will write zeroes to every sector and effectively erase the drive AKAIK. My understanding is standard formating basically just opens up those sectors so new data can be written there, but the data is still there. But as to the virus question, even after formatting, I don't believe the virus could have any detrimental effect even thought theoretically the data might still be on the drive.

[edfair]

Depends on what you have. If it is a boot sector or a partition table infector formatiing doesn't help. The only way to clean is to run a zero fill, or in the case of boot sector fdisk /mbr.

[rave]

a good way to make sure your HDD is clean before u format it and sell it/give it away to somebody is to use KILLDISK.. it pretty much just writes about 3 to 25 times over your HDD to make sure NOTHING is left especially sensetive data.

[David14259]

Are there any programs besides from the manufacturer that'll do a zero fill? I've got a couple generic drives... Or can I use say the Maxtor software on a non maxtor drive? Thanks

[mikeL]

A good tip to protect yourself from reinfection of a boot sector virus if you use a boot disk, is to flip the locking tab on a floppy boot disk to keep it from being written too.