General :: Installation - Wipe Hard Drive To Start Over
Aug 8, 2011
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...
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Mar 8, 2011
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?
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Nov 28, 2010
I 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)
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Jun 1, 2010
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..?
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Aug 15, 2010
So 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
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May 8, 2010
I upgraded 9.10 to 10.04 via the weekly update reminder. All went went on the install and the GRUB menu looks normal; however, the bottom line is Windows XP and when selected will not load Win XP on a separate hard drive. As soon as I click the XP line, the screen goes blank with a flashing cursor in the top left corner. It remains in that condition as long as the desktop has power. What other information can I provide to get some help bringing up XP?
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May 28, 2010
I need to wipe the slate clean on my computer and start from scratch. I have too many issues and school is just around the corner for me, I've got a huge workload and don't have time to find solutions to my problems right now. I recently upgraded to Lucid but that only escalated my woes. The simple fact is my machine is getting too old and it's time to upgrade everything, which won't happen until fall. So for now I simply want to downgrade to hardy because it will be supported until April next year and it is very stable, plus I think it is the release that my graphics card got a decent resolution on (ATI, need I say more?). I'm somewhat of a noob, but I've got my wits about me and have researched the forums for many hours to find solutions, but to no avail. I don't want to go into details about what issues I'm having, I just need to know how to remove ALL kernels off of Grub and start from scratch. Any links to comprehensive tutorials would be ideal, or if someone knows of anything else that will work,
P.S. I love Ubuntu and am a lifer. The philosophy behind it as well as the community are supreme and will someday rule the universe,
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Jun 6, 2010
I just upgraded to 10.04. I went with the option of upgrading grub as well, should of just stuck with the old one I guess. I have 2 seperate physical hard drives, and now I can't get vista running on my other drive. I get to grub, choose the run vista option, and now it just blinks one underscore line in the top left corner of the black screen, and goes nowhere. When I was installing the upgrade, and when I got to the grub upgrade i tried to upgrade all teh different options in grub. All of them worked except the last one, and it warned me, that one of boot options in grub didn't install properly and may cause my OS not to start up. I guess that must of been the vista option.
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Jan 12, 2010
I finally got my new internal hdd for my laptop. I plugged it in and installed windows 7 64 bit. Then I partitioned my external hdd (WD mybook 640gb), and installed ubuntu 9.1 on a 200gb partition of it. The problem is that I didn't unplug the internal hdd before I installed ubuntu. Now the computer will not start unless I have the external hard drive plugged in.
So what should I do so that I will be able to go into windows 7 normally if the external hdd is unplugged? I would also like to be able to use ubuntu when I plug in the external hdd. I wouldn't mind having to go to the boot menu and choosing the external hard drive every time I wanted to use ubuntu.
The reason I partitioned the external hard drive was because it has a lot more space than my 250gb internal hdd, and I also wanted to leave space open to use as was intended, to back up stuff.
However, now that I think about it, I wouldn't mind partitioning the internal hdd and just leaving the external blank (which I should have done in the first place).
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Jul 21, 2010
I had installed Ubuntu 10.04 onto an external hard drive connected by USB to my laptop:
sdd partition
Windoze still resides on the box's internal hard drive:
sda2 partition
I also partitioned the internal hard drive so that I have a repository where my documents etc can be accessed by either linux or windoze:
sda3 partition (FAT32) I'm assuming that Grub is on the external drive somewhere - as is probably now the Windoze MBR. I'd like to be able to give my wife the ability to start the box (and boot into Windoze) when the external drive is not attached (so that she doesn't have to take the latter with her when she needs to be mobile with the computer). What do I need to do to move grub and the MBR back onto the laptop's internal drive? Or, I suppose: What do I need to do to obtain the functionality that I'm looking for? I'm getting somewhat more comfortable with the command line but, I still need a bit of hand-holding
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Jul 24, 2010
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.
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Jan 25, 2010
I 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 ...
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May 1, 2010
Trying 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.
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Mar 16, 2010
My 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.
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Sep 21, 2010
I am running ubuntu on several computers. One in particular runs mythbuntu and is a mythtv server and frontend.
I do the ubuntu upgrade every 6 months so that I can gain the new features and enhancements included in mythtv.
My issue is that with each upgrade seems to come more issues. For instance, this time I upgraded to the latest and greatest and now mythtv crashes every day or two. Also, since vdpau was added to the new nvidia drivers, i am unable to get it to work.
So my question is: Is it normal for you guys to do a complete reinstall when you want to go to a new version of your linux flavor of choice.
It seems that the new ubuntu (really mythbuntu) is very stable and never crashes, but it just seems to me that once you start running a few programs, they just don't upgrade well.
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Jan 22, 2011
I have REHL 6 Desktop. I have a macbook pro 7,1 with nvidia graphics and (I believe)a nvidia sata controller. I have fedora currently installed with no problems during or after installation ( with a few drivers of of course).
When I boot with the disk i burned ( works on other computers) it comes up of a list of devices to select and when i select local CDROM or DVD it goes to select drivers. So, then I tried "burning" the installation files to an external hard drive then I used the DVD to boot and selected Hard Disk then selected SDB1 (path of external HD). With this method I get to the Graphic installation screen and can go to the part were it says custom partitioning. I select ok then it say the only disk that is available is SDB1 (EXTERNAL).
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Mar 3, 2011
I have two hard drives in my computer, one for the operating system and the other solely for storage. They both have ext4 filesystems. Is there any way that i can have my storage hard drive to automatically mount on start up?
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Jul 12, 2011
if i use the safely remove option with disk utilty to power off a drive, is there any user friendly way to restart it (so the system sees it) without unplugging/plugging back in or restarting?
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May 14, 2011
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?
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Apr 29, 2011
I 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.
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Aug 23, 2010
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.
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Jul 4, 2011
I was trying to create a partition on my hard drive on Linux using the GParted program. I noticed my hard drive had a key next to its name but could not find information regarding it online. I proceeded to unmount the drive and made 2 partitions. However, it game me an error saying it couldnt make the partitions. I turned my computer off thinking i would get back to trying tomorrow. Today i turn on my laptop and see the usual hp screen. But after that it goes to a black screen with a blinking underscore looking thing. It goes nowhere from there. It usually goes to a black screen after the hp logo, that says GRUB loading.
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Jan 23, 2010
I wanted to know if i can install 9.10 onto a usb flash drive--without using my computers hard drive at all when running ubuntu off the flash drive-
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Jun 19, 2011
I would like to install Linux Ubuntu 11.04 on an external hard drive - its partitioned and ready for Linux.I've downloaded and burnt the .iso file to a DVD so its all good so far...First of all... is this possible without messing up my macbook? I don't particularly want to break into my macbook to disconnect the hard drive (I read on a tutorial for a previous version of Ubuntu that I'd have to do that... - does it still apply to 11.04?) - as it voids the warranty (I checked ).The reason I ask this is because I had a friend who partitioned their internal hard drive and installed Ubuntu on it. But after installation was complete they couldn't boot up Windows 7 or Ubuntu... and it resulted in them having to clean install Windows 7... - I don't want to end up in that situation
Second... If it is possible to install it without messing up my macbook... - Do I just follow the install instructions but just make sure that where possible I make sure that everything is installed on my external hard drive?...I really need someone to put my mind at rest that everything will run smoothly and that I'll be able to run Mac OS X as usual but also that I'll be able to boot from my external hard drive to run Ubuntu.
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Mar 30, 2011
i have installed fedora 14 with so many libraries ,development tools installed on my pc but i usually have to present some projects which can run on my system .........and can't be executed or compiled due to absence of libraries and tools there so, i there some way to so that i can use this current installation on my hard drive of my pc to some external media like external hard disk and plug and use that installation anywhere on any system..
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Mar 21, 2009
Sometimes when I do anything write heavy such as transferring backup or downloading large files from the net, the machine crashes almost completely.
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Mar 23, 2010
I 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.
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Mar 6, 2010
I 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
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Jun 3, 2011
I 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
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May 28, 2011
ubuntu 8.04 server can not detect seagate sata hard drive 2tb or sata Lg dvdrw x22 sata drive .is it possible to install it without buying a pci ide sata card?is it possible to get a driver for sata driver and sata drive that can be recognise by ubunto 8.04 server ?or to get the files for 1.44 floppy diskdoes the late edition of unbutu recognise sate hdd and sata cdrw drive automaticly during the installation of the unbutu?
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