[ale] OT: Erasing a toasted drive

[John Wells]

Geoffrey said:
> I would try to boot from a cd and attempt to fdisk, reformat and then
> rewrite the drive.  If it's totally toast, no luck, but if you can fdisk
> the drive and start writing stuff to it, leave it over night and see how
> far it goes.  Do the bad block check when you format it.  That could
> well take over night or longer.  All depends on how paranoid you are.

I want to go this route, but I've lost my laptop IDE to regular IDE
convertor I bought some 6 years ago...searched high and low last night
with no luck.

Anyone know where I can pick one of these up quickly? I'm in Greensboro
currently, so ATL-only options not viable. I'm off to check CompUSA's
site, but if you have any other suggestions let me know.

Thanks,
John