I'm returning a failing [under warrantee] WD hard drive--first time I've ever RMAd a hard drive. Drive has Mint+Ubuntu installed.
I've backed up my data and am wondering:
What's the best way to wipe the data before I return drive? I want to do this right because I don't want any hassles with WD about this.
Should I use my Mint or Ubuntu LiveCD to reformat it? Or is it better to use a Linux pgm to write zeros?
I had Ubuntu on my hard drive and tried to install Arch Linux. Things got messy and I now have an unstable, unbootable machine. I feel the installation failed because there were remains of Ubuntu. I'd like to wipe the hard drive and start over from scratch; without anything on there. How do I do this? I have several partitions made in a desperate attempt to make it all work. So I'd like to remove all partitions and any other information that's on the drive. I can not start any OS, but I can boot with the Live USB of Arch Linux...
View 2 Replies View RelatedI am trying to wipe the hard drive on an ancient laptop. The current plan is to find a live distro that can run shred or equivalent program. The problem is that most ultralight linux's don't seem to work with the RAM restrictions (Optimistically 80 MB, Worst Case 16 or less). I will likely have to just bust open the case and physically mutilate the Drive I would prefer a more 'civilized' approach (defined as one which keeps the machine in one functioning piece).
Model: Dell Latitude XPi CD
Processor: Intel (Inside) Pentium (one?) MMX
Available Media: CD, Possibly Floppy (I have access to only one other machine with a drive)
OS: Windows 95
I am having a hard time getting any farther specs. If anyone knows of a distro that has a prayer of running in these conditions I would love to know.
Current candidates:
Puppy Linux < 1.0.2
DSL (Unsure of architecture compatibility)
I want to wipe the drive to the bios before shipment back to factory. I tried Daricks nuke but it wouldnt burn to usb with the usual programs. What program will TOTALLY nuke my hard drive and work with netbootin or other UBU program..?
View 9 Replies View RelatedSo in essence, my drive has become a cluster of random partitions, multiple Ubuntu installs, and random windows systems. It's gotten so bad that on my entire 250gb system my main Ubuntu install only gets 40gb of memory. Could anybody give me a step by step guide to do the following:
1. Completely wipe and departition my disc.
2. Install Ubuntu from a backup .tar file
3. Install a 40gb windows 7 partition
I recently used a flash drive to try MeeGo on my netbook. Unfortunately, the application I used to write MeeGo to the flash drive created a new partition in a rather unusual format. The Ubuntu disk utility can't delete the partition, and GParted can't even see it. How can I completely wipe the flash drive from Ubuntu? I'd prefer not to install any additional software.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI got a dell inspiron 1501 laptop with a 80Gb sata drive what is the best solution to add data storage space for someone that love to have multiples operating systems at hand Note: I use mostly linux so I won't need to change my laptop for many years maybe ...
View 2 Replies View RelatedMy parents bought a new hard drive for a laptop that I've owned for several years. It's much larger than the current one, so I plan on splitting it up to dual boot it with Ubuntu.I have no problem with partitioning a drive (I always keep a LiveCD handy), but my question is this: how can I go about moving the existing partition to the new drive? This is a laptop, so I can't simply plug the new drive into another slot.
Also, even if I manage to move it, will Windows still work on the new drive in a larger partition? I've had this laptop for quite a while, and I've lost the recovery discs that came with it a long time ago. I also have a lot of software without CDs to reinstall them with. This makes not reinstalling Windows a high priority.
What should be done to completely wipe clean a solid state drive (before selling a computer)? What should be done for a regular drive, and what considerations apply to a SSD?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have a real love/hate relationship with Ubuntu. A few weeks back my Windows XP crashed and I had to take it to a tech to have my drive wiped and the operating system reinstalled. Just when I got XP back up and working perfectly someone told me to try Ubuntu. I made the Ubuntu 10.10 boot installation disc and installed it. Although I partitioned the drive during the install I was never able to reboot to Windows and thus lost all the files and programs I had just finished installing.
Okay. long story short: I got used to running Ubuntu and started to like it. Then this morning I was prompted to upgrade to Natty 11.04. After the install I got a message about being low on utilities and to boot in the Ubuntu Classic mode, which I was not able to do.
So now my machine is virtually non-functional. It won't run any programs but sometimes if I'm lucky I can get the computer to shut off without pulling the plug from the wall. I think I just need to wipe the drive and start over. Can someone tell me how to do this using DOS without having to make another long trip to my tech? Luckily I have a Windows XP laptop to use to access this forum.
I have a SATA drive that worked fine. Then I installed two more hard drives into my system. When these hard drives are installed, if I try to access the SATA drive in Linux, it will start lightly clicking and then the drive will become unavailable. If I power on the machine without the other two hard drives then it works fine. What could be causing this to happen? I don't think it's heat because the two hard drives are far away from the SATA drive.
View 1 Replies View RelatedTrying to install Fedora 12 using the 6 CDs. Trying to install on an older x86 box.Problem is that when detecting my hard drive, Fedora 12 recognizes it as a sda hard drive instead of hda hard drive. I have no SCSI connected to my computer what so ever. It's an old fashion PATA Western Digital hard drive.If I proceed with the install, Fedora 12 only installs 200MB of the OS from the first CD only. No options for additional software or anything.
View 1 Replies View RelatedSometimes when I do anything write heavy such as transferring backup or downloading large files from the net, the machine crashes almost completely.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI am trying to move a whole bunch of files from one partition on one hard drive to the same partition on another hard drive. Can I mount the same partition (same name, different drives, i.e. /data on /dev/hda1 and /data on /dev/hdb1)and copy those files? Shutdown the server, take out /dev/hda1 and boot up with the new drive and it's /data contents.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a Toshiba laptop with BIOS that will not recognize USB as a boot medium (I have purchased two USB 'thumb' drives with Distro's that do boot but the BIOS see them as HDD devices!)I did manage to install and boot a distro from the USB HD but ended up with the USB drive having to be connected' to select any of the OS partions, to boot anything.I do realize that somehow, when installing the new distro on the USB drive, I changed the GRUB configuration to be on the USB drive which obviously I did not want, so can
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have a laptop with only 30GB storage and I want to install Lubuntu in virtual box but Lubuntu needs 5GB of storage space which i dont have. Could i use an external 160GB hard drive to act as the hard drive for the virtual machine without affecting the files that are already on the external hard drive
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have 2 ubuntu's: 1 on my ineternal hard drive, 1 on my external
When I startup without my ext drive =>GRUB error 21.
And when I plug it in I can choose: the standard ubuntu kernel is the one on my external, and the original one is listed under other...
I'd like to be able to startup without external hard drive and make the ubuntu on my internal drve the standard.
Is Ubuntu like windows and can you download Ubuntu to a flash drive or external hard drive and if so what kind?
View 4 Replies View Relatedcan u explain the process wiping step by step? Wher should i edit 0?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI just installed a Sata WD 500GB hard drive, shows up in BIOS as secondary master drive, but do not see it after boot. What gives?
tone@homeserver:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 9.2G 3.3G 5.5G 38% /
tmpfs 881M 0 881M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 740K 9.3M 8% /dev
tmpfs 881M 0 881M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda2 65G 197M 61G 1% /srv
I have a Toshiba Dynabook 2010 laptop and I want to install DSL linux on it.The problem is when I boot with DSL Linux there is no hard drive named /dev/hda1 and fdisk -l command does not return.How can I overcome this problem?And I could only boot into DSL if I use the nofstab as a kernel parameter.when I boot with fstab then kernel panic will occur.
I again checked, now there is a /dev/hda but my hda should contain two ext3 partitions.But the problem is the kernel doesn't recognize them.I got debian in my Had disk too.The problem is debian can recognize these two partitions.
I want to securely backup my 80G HD, but doing a complete backup takesforever and slows down my machine, so I want to backup just 1G per day. Details: % First hurdle: on the first day, I want to backup the "first" 1G of the hard drive. Of course, there really is no "first" 1G on a hard drive.% After 80 days, I'll have my whole HD backed up... assuming none of my files ever change, which of course they do. So the backup plan/program must also catch file creation/changes as they come along. % The backups must be consistent, in that I can restore my system restoring the backups sequentially. In other words, "dd if=/harddrive" probably won't work.
% The backups should encrypt file contents AND names, but I don't see this as a major hurdle. % Once the backup has backed up everything (even changed files), it can re-backup the first 1G on my hard drive. Even though this backup is redundant, that's OK, because I always want to be backing up something (eg, if I'm backing up to optical media, the older media might start going corrupt). Is there a magic backup plan/program that does thisIn reality, I want to do this for multiple machines drives each, but think that solving the above will solve the general
if I try to install a linux distro on an external hard drive, while I have windows XP on my primary, will the Linux stlil install a Grub on the Windows MBR. Or have I got that wrong.
View 2 Replies View RelatedA friend of mine has just given me an old 80GB hard drive provided that i erase the hard drive. So could someone tell me that if i used Code: shred -vz -n 3 /dev/hda to erase all data contained on the hard drive Would i then have to reformat the hard drive so i could install a Linux OS on it?
View 9 Replies View Relatedhow do i make /mmt is the mount point to my hard drive, and how do i mount hard drive? thank you i'm very new to linux.
View 3 Replies View RelatedMy old centos 5.5 server stopped working so I setup a new one and I can't mount it to get the data off (if you're curious, I do have a NAS, but because of renovations it was accidentally shut-off July 2...)here's the fdisk -l:
[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
[code]....
I have just recently installed Ubuntu 8.04 (i had 10.04, but the video drivers were not compatible). Here's my dilemna. I run the "df" command and notice that it appears as though the drive is 100% full with no space free. Is that correct? And where do I look for the offending file/directory?
Code:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 304072908 304066468 0 100% /
varrun 1037700 108 1037592 1% /var/run
varlock 1037700 0 1037700 0% /var/lock
udev 1037700 68 1037632 1% /dev
[Code]...
I'm trying to install Ubuntu 9.04 on an HP Compaq dc5000 uT with Windows XP Pro. service pack 3. Downloaded the ISO file and burned a CD with Infra Recorder. The demonstration version works ok as far as I can tell, this is my first try at using any form of Linux. If I can get Ubuntu to work I plan to get rid of Windows completely. I'm stuck at step 4 of the install process, all options in the partition window are dimmed, nothing is clickable.
View 10 Replies View RelatedI have just purchased an older Linspire system, however it is brand new. I want to add a win xp hard drive, will the machine allow me to boot from either drive? If so, how do I set it up or what software do I need? I see other posts about dual boot but they are from a partitioned drive.
View 3 Replies View RelatedSo on Ubuntu, How do I change the size of the drive partition that Ubuntu is on? OR how do I seperate Ubuntu OS from everything else? My partition size is 10 gigs, hard drive is 160 gigs, so how do I save all my music, videos and pics to my free space? By default everything goes to my 10gigger and now Im obviously out of space.
View 8 Replies View Related