Disk formatting

[normanallen]

Very simple question - can a Ubuntu 9.10 distro format a hard drive in ntfs format?

[here2serve]

Very 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

If you need to do it from a live cd and want a gui use gparted

[normanallen]

Actually I was trying to wipe my Windows C: drive, and wanted to know if Ubuntu could do it.

[here2serve]

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]

Thank you. That should be enough to get me going!