General :: Wipe The Hard Drive On An Ancient Laptop?
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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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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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 13, 2011
My brother must have the oldest computer ever, its got no option to boot via usb, when you boot with cd it boots up like a livecd usually would (gets to the Ubuntu screen with "Try Ubuntu without installing" and then "Install Ubuntu" (or the equivalent for other livecd's)) and then just goes into a black screen (which flashes - a sort of brightness high and brightness low) and keeps flashing until I turn it off. It has Ubuntu on it, but it's too slow since he has like 126mb ram. It was installed using the actual Ubuntu CD from the Ubuntu Store. Usb booting isn't allowed by bios and the computer wont install things via dvds.
I have tried:
Lubi
LiveCD's
grub chainloading USB
Installing xubuntu-desktop and then removing all ubuntu's stuff
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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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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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Mar 2, 2010
I was transferring some files from my external USB hard drive onto my laptop (running 64bit Karmic), and my laptop froze up for whatever reason.Everything on the screen stopped and the Scroll Lock and Caps Lock LEDs began flashing.Not knowing anything else to do, I hard booted off with the power switch.At this point, I was concerned if anything on either hard rive would be damagedI booted my laptop back up, and all seemed well until I trued to open my Documents folder.For some reason, Ubuntu will no longer open any folders at allI can't click on ComputerDocuments, Music, etc. When I do, a tab opens in the taskbar that says Opening folder. It stays on screen for about 20 seconds, and then goes away and the folder never opens.The weird part is if I open gEdit and try to load a file, I can see and get to everything.
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Apr 3, 2010
Intel Celeron processor 400mhz
96mb ram
ati rage mobility 4mb video card
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May 16, 2011
System Fossil age laptop, Debian testing with lilo. SymptomAfter an upgrade (2nd week May), custom kernel compiled, kernel panics on boot, saying unable to mount root drive. (or more precise, unable to mount whatever uuid device). Stock kernel can boot. Workaround Instead of uuid on kernel option, use prehistoric root=/dev/XXX.
edit:The kernel which panics is 2.6.38 (make oldconfig, all default answer from 2.5.32 config)Stock is 2.6.32 On 2.6.38 after boot with tweak, the command "uuid" looks good.
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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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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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Dec 13, 2010
Installing Linux on second hard drive in laptop I hope to get a laptop with two hard drives. I like to know if UBUNTU comes with installer that would easily let me install UBUNTU on the second hard drive. And also let me select which OS to boot on startup. Win 7-64-bits will be on the first hard drive, Linux will be on 2nd / other hard drive. I prefer NOT to use Wubi to install linux in Win 7's primary partition because should I reinstall Win7 with recovery disks, it will wipe out Linux.
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Apr 7, 2009
I am upgrading my old 40G hard drive to a new 160G one and want to know the best way to set it for use with my system. I currently have a Windows partition which I want to keep & reinstate onto the new drive. Then I want to have another 3 partitions for different distros.
What should I do as a first step when I put the drive in boot off a live CD. I am assuming that I will need to do. If I do a, # grub-install, will this then format the MBR and then create a small partition for /boot. Following that, do I just restore the Windows partition immediately after the /boot partition, and then create new partitions for the distros accordingly.
I would also like to create a seperate swap partition and then install F10. Is there an option in Anaconda to not use LVM (can't remember).
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Dec 1, 2009
I would like to backup up my linux files to an external hard drive from a laptop. What would be the most simple and easiest way to do this? How would I format an external hard drive in linux.
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Dec 30, 2009
I got a new laptop, a Dell D400. I want to swap my hard-drive from my old laptop into the new one, and did so... but then got an error stating that my CPU didn't support PAE.
As far as I was aware I hadn't actually installed a kernel with PAE enabled [as I always pick a real-time kernel for audio work]: but then read that lots of the newer distibutions are enabling PAE by default [which is what's caused the problem].
Is there an easy way of disabling PAE in the existing kernel? Or would it be easier to downgrade to another version of OpenSUSE? I'm on 11.2.
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Jan 26, 2010
I am having on trying to backup my crashed laptop with ubuntu 9.10 when i double click on my hard drive, it says "unable to mount location" and it says "unable to mount location" a job is pending on /dev/sda2 when i right click on my hard drive and select mount.
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Jan 25, 2011
Have a seagate laptop hard drive, it spins up momentarily, makes some quiet electronic 'zipping' sounds then stops. After this, it is still reachable by the seagate utility, which says the hard drive is experiencing too many read errors, but the platters are definately not spinning.
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Jul 19, 2011
Long time Slack user, thought I would try to update my old laptop (Toshiba Satellite with AMD K6-2 333 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive) from 10.2 to 13.37 in celebration of the newest version :-)
By update, I mean a complete wipe and reinstall, just to be clear.
So 10.2 runs well, everything looks shiny (XFCE of course) but when I try to install 13.37 I run into trouble. I figured out to boot with huge.s instead of hugesmp.s, but when I try to run 'setup' I get an error that says I have no partitions. mkay, I try fdisk (or cfdisk), but I get literally NO response - no error, no nothing but a return to the command promt. It is exactly as if fdisk does not recognize there is a hard drive there at all.
I boot back into 10.2,check the BIOS, everything looks fine, I have a drive mounted at /dev/hda1, swap at /dev/hda3. Are there some additional parameters I should be booting with? Does it matter that the hard drive is ATA?
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Apr 13, 2010
This isn't a problem with the 2.6.26 kernel that I have been using, but it is with newer ones. I want to upgrade to a backports kernel, because there has been a REALLY long standing 2.6.26 bug with cpu frequency governors and suspending that is never going to get fixed.
Basically, with the 2.6.30 backports kernel, the hard drive spindown time is way too short. I'd like it to spin down after a minute or two of inactivity, but it is spinning down after only 5-10 seconds. Is there any way to fix this? edit: Now that I think about it, this is also a problem on another laptop that runs squeeze.
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Jul 13, 2010
I am getting ready to install Ubuntu 9.04 on my Dell laptop, only because 10.04 won't work. I have the hard drive partitioned as C: and D: . I am keeping Windows on C: for a couple of applications that need it. I still have a few things on the D: drive. Do I need to have it completely clean and formatted? And, will Ubuntu ask where I want it to be installed or will it just take the largest contiguous space available? After the install, does the system automatically ask if I want Windows or Ubuntu or how do I tell it which system to bring up?
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Oct 4, 2010
I have a Toshiba laptop that seems to be freezing on extended operations involving the file system/hard drive. (that's kind of a guess on my part). The system has frozen during the last day or two when I:
- try a large file operation with Nautilus
- try exporting a large video file from Kdenlive
- try formatting the disk for a new install of Maverick (I decided that with the new version almost out, I might try upgrading in case I broke my system)
What I see is the screen freezing and the mouse does not move. As I said, I tried installing the Maverick RC from the Alternate CD (I wanted to do a minimal install). The install hung on the partitioning step and the caps-lock key started blinking (though I don't get this in other cases). I have booted into my Lucid live-cd and a Puppy live-cd to try Gparted, with the same results - the system freezes (but the caps-lock key doesn't blink). Puppy HAS performed better generally, for example I was able to complete my large file operation (backing things up!) but it is freezing on the partitioning step.
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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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Apr 11, 2010
I've got this old computer. PII processor, 4gb HDD, I forget how much ram but the mobo is an AOpen AX63 pro [URL].. The machine still runs great. I just finished cleaning all the connections with alcohol and putting the thing back together. I've got Ubuntu 5.10 on it right now, but with so little in the way of system resources, I want to get something more scaled down on there. Googling hasn't resulted in anything really useful.
So, does anybody know of a scaled down distro aimed at old computers? Obviously something current would be great (I considered trying to find a netbook distro and use that, but I don't know if there would be any issues using that kind of thing on a desktop.) but I'd be willing to use an older distro if I need to. I really just want to use it as a writing machine, with maybe some basic internet access.
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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 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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