HD recovery partition after wiping with NOrton Gdisk

why not just format the partition you don't want..use an unconditional format

The problem is the laptops contain important information that our company wants to be wiped clean and make data retrieval impossible. Since with formatting, data retrieval is possible, we use Gdisk to completely erase the disk contents. Since they are customer units and they do not know how to create the recovery disks, it is my responsibility to make sure they get their laptops back with recovery partition or some other solution.

Thanks,
Priya.

I'm guessing for the same reason we have to. To comply with security requirements from various sources, we have to wipe disks to DOD specifications before we sell or give away any old equipment.
It doesn't look like Gdisk has the option.
We use Data Eraser from Ontrack for this purpose, and it does have the option to wipe certain partitions only.
http://www.ontrack.com/dataeraser/

Hard Disk Scrub from http://summitcn.com/download.html  will do a secure erase on all free space on a disk.   Simply delete all the files you want to be sure can't be accessed; empty the Recycle Bin;  and then run Hard Disk Scrub in secure erase mode -- it does a DOD 5220.22-M compliant erasure for all of the free space.

Alternatively, you could restore the laptop from the restore partition; then install Hard Disk Scrub and run it in secure mode (so all free space is securely wiped) => this saves you from having to decide what to erase.

Another alternative is to use Active KillDisk from http://www.killdisk.com/features.htm

This will let you select a partition to erase instead of the whole disk;  but note that only the paid version ("Professional") is DOD 5220.22-M compliant.

kenneniah is right. I found how to unhide the partition using Gdisk. There are 2 partitions . One is the active partition which is 97% of the disk and the other is the HDD recovery partition which is 3% of the disk. But could some one please give me a step by step guidance of how to create a standard ghost boot cd without using floppy at all, since the laptops I need to wipe do not have floppy drives. I tried using the virtual floppy drive but ghost boot disk asks for 2 floppies and Iam stuck there.

thanks,
Priya.

Thank You very much Kenneniah. Using the above options I can delete the selected partition. Then I had to activate the HDD recovery partition to restore the OS from it.

Priya.

Welcome, glad to have helped some :)

Did you figure out how to make a ghost cd or do you still need some help with that?

I figured out how to make a ghost cd.

Thanks again,
Priya.