Ubuntu :: Erase External HD W/o Erasing Main Drive?
Apr 12, 2010
I have an external hard drive I use for backups. This drive has entire operating system on it(don't know which one, but I think it's intrepid), from when I did a complete backup eons ago. I have added new stuff since then. I tried to erase the system files on it, since they take up space and aren't likely from my current system. I don't run the drive all the time, only when I'm backing up files. The rest of the time, it's off. When I did this, I couldn't run any programs on my main computer( the bin directory was gone), and it wasn't in my trash on the main drive or the external drive. I tried re-installing without erasing my home directory on the main drive; it went okay, until I tried to open a file.
My /home apparently had nothing in it, so i downloaded my backup files, only to run out of room. The files were there; I just couldn't see them. I tried to open several programs, but was told I didn't have root access. Finally, I just reformatted the whole drive and re-installed everything. What I'd like to know is:1. How do I clear the junk from the external drive without hurting the main drive?
2. Why did erasing the old bin file on the external drive whack the same file on the main drive?3.Several times before, I have upgraded or re-installed xubuntu, leaving my home directory intact. The upgrade either can't find my files, or forgets half my settings. How can I keep my files and settings? I hate having to re-install everything from scratch each time I upgrade. I thought having a separate /home directory was supposed to protect all that.
View 4 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Dec 19, 2010
I bought a new 2.5 inch SATA laptop hard drive and mounted it in an external enclosure for use as an external backup drive. I had a whale of a time getting it formatted (ref post), but finally did by putting the bare drive into a laptop and used Ubuntu to partition and format as part of installing. Then I remounted the bare drive back into the enclosure and sure enough now I can now see the drive.
So now I want to erase the files from the backup drive. Problem is, Ubuntu won't let me delete or add any files. In Nautlis, if I select the files and "right click", Move to Trash is grayed out. If I press the delete button, nothing happens. If I try to copy a new file to the backup drive it says "permission denied". If I go into the Properties .> Permissions for the drive everything is grayed out so I can't change the permission. It also says "You are not the owner so you cannot change permissions".
View 7 Replies
View Related
Mar 20, 2011
A 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 Related
Jun 9, 2010
My OS hard drive crashed on my file server. and now I am trying to "restore" my drives.
I am having problems re-creating without erasing data my Linux LVM drive. I would like some instructions on how to re-create my logicalVolumeGroups and phisical groups so I can re-mount my Linux LVM partition.
Here is my specific information.
when I do a pvdisplay I only get my boot vg_files group listed
pvdisplay
--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/sda2
VG Name vg_files
PV Size 74.33 GB / not usable 577.00 KB
Allocatable yes (but full)
[Code]...
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jun 18, 2011
I got 8.10 to load and run on my set up, got disc burned ready for fresh install but won't boot from disc? erasing the drive is no issue so no problem there, i at least have a taste for this now and are liking it.is there a way to erase the hard drive, to get the disc to boot so i can install a supported version? i have kubuntu 11.04 ready to go.from playing on this kde version am really impressed and like this.smokes windows all to pieces, though i like my games for window too
View 8 Replies
View Related
Jan 13, 2010
I use a Kingston 1 GB USB to install a Acer one with ubuntu 9.04 and works perfect, the problem come wen i try to erase the USB. I can't erase the files or format the usb. How can I mount the unit with the RW options. The sistem say "the unid is label Read Only"
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jun 22, 2011
After installation, when starting to boot, I have several choices showing:
1)Ubuntu, w/ Linux 2.6.38-8-generic pae
2)Ubuntu, w/ Linux 2.6.38-8-generic pae (Recovery Mode)
3)Memory test (memtest 86+)
4)Memory test (memtest 86+, serial console 115200
5)Windows Server 2003 For Small Business Server (on /dev/sdd1)
I used #1 and I only have a blank screen.
I used #2 and I went into recovery mode, but I keep getting the error message: "No root
file system is defined. Please correct this from the partition.
I just want to erase all of numbers 1 to 5 and start clean. what should I do?
View 8 Replies
View Related
Apr 21, 2010
I have 1TB drive, I need to completley erase/overwrite all data.What would be the quickest way under linux?
View 15 Replies
View Related
Aug 29, 2010
I would like to completely erase my hard drive and install Ubuntu 10.04 on again fresh. I think some files have become corrupted from a power cut that I had last night whilst the laptop was plugged in (and turned on).
I'm not bothered about completely wiping the hard drive since there are no important files on it (at most there are just a lot of packages I downloaded from the repro...) I don't have any Windows installations either - it's just a simple; wipe the hard drive and reinstall all over again case
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jan 3, 2011
my linux server is running with an old IDE hard drive getting these hdparm results:
[code]...
i have a WD Raptor drive i'm going to install and put a fresh install of linux on it. i'm just curious, will using a much faster HD as my main drive increase the speeds of my network transfers from the raid drive? do transfers only go as fast as the system drive?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Apr 23, 2010
My laptops screen has recently gained an annoying blue tint, which i do not have the expertise (or money to pay somebody) to fix, so i am using my TV as an external monitor. So what i am proposing to do is purely use the External and leave the laptop monitor off. I am dual-booting Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.04 Devel, In XP it was a simple case of right clicking the Intel Graphics Media Accelorator and choosing the External Monitor option, this then allowed me to set my resolution to 1280x960 and i was happy. (even bigger desktop than before actually)
I cannot seem to find this option in Ubuntu, going through System -> Prefrences -> Monitor gives me the option to mirror the screens, but that leaves me with an incredibly low resolution, choosing to not mirror the screens allows me to set the resolution to 1280x960, but the LCD screen still acts as my main. Is there any way I can set it to recognise the TV as the main, and switch off the LCD like I did in Windows?
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jan 14, 2009
I 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.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Feb 19, 2010
I'm using dual-screen output with KDE 4.4 on my laptop. Is it possible to have the KDE panel on the external monitor if attached and back on the laptop's LCD panel as soon as the monitor is disconnected?
It seems that Plasma prefers the built-in LCD even if an external monitor is connected. I tried various settings with xrandr and also in the System Settings but none of them helped. The only way to move the KDE panel to the external screen is to disable the built-in LCD.
What I would basically like to do is to use the external monitor as primary in the office and the laptop LCD next to it as a second screen. When I'm traveling I'd like to use only the laptop LCD.
Is there also a nice way to switch between the screens? On the Internet I found a script for the "screen switch" key for IBM Thinkpad and modified it to work on my Dell. But it would be nice to have this also automatic: autodetect the monitor attachment/removal and perform a configured action. The KRandr doesn't seem to have such a feature. Is there anything I could use?
My system is: Kubuntu 9.10 with KDE 4.4 upgrade. Hardware: Dell Inspiron 1545 with Intel GM45 card.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Feb 2, 2011
How do I format another drive to "accept" Linux and delete/erase Windows?
View 6 Replies
View Related
Dec 25, 2009
I have a 500 gig external usb, and a few 8 gig flash drives. If i copy a file (say a movie or large file) from my primary hard drive (80 gig WD formatted to ext3) to a usb drive it transfers very slowly, about 2 mb/s. But if I copy a file off my secondary internal drive (40 gig seagate formatted to ntfs) it transfers full speed (25-30 mb/s) Its also very slow transfering between internal hard drives (again, no more than 5 mb/s) I checked and as far as i can tell both drives are running in DMA mode. Any reason my primary seems to be causing this bottleneck? it seems to preform fine otherwise (as it is the drive with my ubuntu installation on it)
View 4 Replies
View Related
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.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Mar 6, 2011
I have an 8 gig ssd Dell vostro that has been running ubuntu linux successfully for several months. Linux is the only O.S. on the machine. Wishing to have more room I inserted a new 32 Gig SDHC card in the card slot and did an ext4 format and then did an install using the 10.10 disk that did the original install. Everything seemed to proceed as expected, but it rebooted using the 8 Gig drive. The 32 Gig card appears to have all the proper files. How do I get it to boot from that card?
View 3 Replies
View Related
May 30, 2011
I have 350GB external Western Digital USB hard Drive.When I try to remove it from the system by executing Safely Remove Drive menu the fedora 15 system gets stuck.The processor starts giving a hum sound and it goes on even if it is left for half an hour in the stuck state.The Mouse is not working and everything is halted.
View 13 Replies
View Related
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..
View 2 Replies
View Related
Feb 23, 2010
A few weeks back I was trying to install this (alongside windows 7) and no matter what I tried it would not install. I tried both 9.04 32 bit and 9.10 64 bit. Each screen (language, keyboard, etc) took about 20 minutes to load, and when I finally got to the install it always stopped at about 2/3 percent, giving some type of I/O error. No matter how many times i reburned and redownloaded. (old thread if you're curious)
I eventually gave up but then realized I had an old xbox hard drive hooked up that I cannot boot or read or do anything. It was set as hard drive 0 in windows hard drive manager or whatever. So I unplugged it. Now my windows drive is drive 0, and I have a second internal drive.
I finally got back to installing this. I avoided the graphical installer at first because it was so slow, opting for the alternate cd. It went fast but when I tried to partition it was unclear to me which disk i was partitioning. Doesnt matter because when i clicked ok, it froze at 0% for 30 minutes so i had to do a hard restart. Windows ran the disk check, etc, etc, I checked the disk management in windows and it was just a single windows partition as it should be.
So I tried the graphical cd again instead. It goes really fast through the screens now, HOWEVER it will not detect my drive 0 windows drive! Just my second internal drive which of course I can't install on without wiping the entire thing. I have installed kubuntu 9.04 dual booted with windows xp on this exact hard drive, over a year ago successfully, so I don't get it. What do i do??
View 6 Replies
View Related
Jun 28, 2010
I posted this here because I think Linux Mint is based off of Debian, am I wrong? Anyhow I installed mint to a seperate partition next to windows on my computer. I had my external unplugged at the time... It was actually plugged in at my neighbors. They where watching a movie I had on it; anyhow I plugged it back in went to bed woke up and it took out its own partition on the external.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Sep 22, 2010
I recently installed Debian, using the amd64 Network Install .iso. I'm using XFCE4 as my desktop environment, and everything is working well... on my laptop's screen.
My desired setup is to have my laptop sitting on a well-ventilated shelf, closed, and to have an external monitor be my main monitor. I want this because I'm using my laptop as my "home" computer, so it never moves, and I don't like the keyboard/trackpad. My laptop has a VGA output, and I can get my desired setup on my Windows partition (not stating a preference ; just that the hardware CAN do what I want it to).
I've been working my way around the Internet for a few days, now, and I've got the commercial NVIDIA driver installed. If I run sudo nvidia-config --twinview I can get my external monitor to be part of the display, which is great, but it's part of a dual-screen monitor setup, which is not what I want at all, because (a) XFCE's multiple virtual desktops are good enough for me and (b) my graphics card is integrated, and I'm trying to squeeze every drop of performance out of my laptop that I can (1 gig of RAM; the less that my graphics card eats into it, the better). Plus, it'd be annoying to accidentally drop something on my laptop's screen, and then have to dig it out of the shelf in order to undo it. I'm not saying that I'm consistently clumsy, but I'd eventually end up doing it.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Dec 7, 2010
I have a Macbook 2,1 since 2007. Last week my hard drive just died, so I decided to replace it with a new one, no problems with that. The problem came when I had to install an operative system, because my DVD drive has been broken for a year and a half now. I know we can easily install MacOSX from an external usb drive, but I don't have a big enough pendrive at the moment. So I went for Ubuntu. I have managed to get an Ubuntu 10.10 live usb stick working like charm, if anyone is interested. I just downloaded the latest i386 iso and followed this advice by pxwpxw for the 32bit EFI.
The only thing I had to change in the boot.cfg was the name of the iso and -very important- changed initrd.gz for initrd.lz. The live usb works great. But I decided to do an installation on the hard drive. I installed it using the whole hard drive and didn't get any errors. But when I boot the macbook it doesn't detect anything. I guess I need an EFI bootloader or something to make it work. I've tried to follow this guide but it seems to be intended for someone who already has MacOSX and the Ubuntu installation working. I just want to install a bootloader or whatever I need from the "outside" (from the live usb I'm using). I tried to just throw reFit into the main hard drive's root folder but it doesn't work. I think that maybe creating an HFS+ partition and installing reFit in it may work, but I don't think I can create that kind of partition from the Ubuntu usb and I also need a working MacOSX to run the enable.sh. I've also read of elilo but I've seen that it hasn't been updated for 3 years
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jan 15, 2011
I wanted to install a Linux distro to a flash drive so that I can have a portable OS with all my settings, programs, etc. wherever I go. So I fired up a Linux Mint Live CD and installed Mint to the flash drive, and this seems to work OK. But now, whenever I try to boot up my system normally without the flash drive plugged in, it doesn't seem to work. It basically hangs for a bit, and then I get the following prompt:
However, when I try powering my system up when the USB is plugged into the computer, it gives me an option between using the OS installed on my USB and the OS installed on my HD. Selecting the latter, everything loads up just fine. I'm guessing that installing Mint to the flash drive somehow messed with my native Grub installation.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Mar 8, 2011
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 Related
May 30, 2010
I'm not sure what to do, but I just rescued photos and documents using ubuntu live cd, gddrescue and photorec. The data carving went fine and I was able to move all of my recovered jpg's into a recovery/jpg folder, as well as my word doc's into a recover/doc folder. I also have recovery/video and recovery/audio. Now here's my problem...
I used the right-click "safely remove drive" from the ubuntu interface and then unplugged my external drive. I then tried to view the recovered photos, etc on my windows 7 desktop, but when I plug in the external drive I get an error and a prompt to "format the drive" so that windows can use it.
I plugged the external drive back into my failed laptop and with the ubuntu live cd can see the drive, but none of the folders display. I can cd "change directories" to all of the folders using a terminal, but still can't see them outside of the terminal. That is, with the ubuntu interface. I'm just trying to finish up recoverying these photos, which I thought I had done.
View 4 Replies
View Related
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 ...
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 15, 2011
I need to re-format an external drive. All the instructions I have found start with figuring out where the drive is mounted (sda, hda, etc.). However, as soon as my RH Linux machine sees the drive's format (ntfs) it decides it won't even mount it in the first place. Gives me an error message. Also, the drive doesn't show up at all via "df -k". how to convince RHL to be a little more accepting?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Feb 5, 2011
I have two harddrives installed on my HTPC. I am using the smaller (120gb) to run the OS (kubuntu 10) the larger (1 tb) I want to use to store all of my media.
However....
The second hard drive has THREE linux Distros on it (from me testing and playing and making decisions) and I CANT figure out how to get them off.....
The hard drives are SATA and plugged in in the correct order.
I have tried fdisking and reformating which seemed to work, but when I boot it still asks me which OS i want to boot to.
Right now I am trying to zero out the hard drive by using ths
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
I typed that in as root about 15 minutes ago and hit enter. it hasn't said anything since. no command prompt or anythng. I am hoping it is working, we will see.
View 8 Replies
View Related
Mar 20, 2010
I would like to try another flavor of linux (fedora)..Currently i am using Ubuntu 9.04, without erasing ubuntu i like to try Fedora..So can someone tell me how to install fedora without losing Ubuntu?
View 8 Replies
View Related
