Very simple question - can a Ubuntu 9.10 distro format a hard drive in ntfs format?
normanallen
4
Junior Poster
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Jump to PostVery simple question - can a Ubuntu 9.10 distro format a hard drive in ntfs format?
Do you mean that you want to install Ubuntu onto a ntfs partition or that you need to partition a drive as ntfs?
From the command prompt use mkfs
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here2serve
14
Newbie Poster
normanallen
4
Junior Poster
Actually I was trying to wipe my Windows C: drive, and wanted to know if Ubuntu could do it.
here2serve
14
Newbie Poster
Actually I was trying to wipe my Windows C: drive, and wanted to know if Ubuntu could do it.
If you are dual booting and want to reformat the windows partition
sudo apt-get install gparted
Once you open gparted it should be pretty straight forward for you.
If you need to wipe a drive from the live cd. Don't do this if you are dual booting.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda [for a sata sda for ide hda]
or for a more secure wipe but it will take longer
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda
dd is going to start at the beginning of the drive and over write every block including the boot sector.
Reformatting a drive will NOT wipe it. I have recovered 33+ gb of usable data from a 160gb drive that had been reformatted and a fresh install of XP.
normanallen
4
Junior Poster
Thank you. That should be enough to get me going!
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