954,229 Members — Technology Publication meets Social Media
Username:
Password:
Lost login information?
Have something to say? Contribute New Article Reply to this Article

Wiping hard drive, starting anew

I need to wipe my hard drive, because it is so full of crap, and spyware, and everything else that my computer is basically useless. I am running windows right now, but have the software to install Linux. How can i go about wiping my hard drive, then starting anew with Linux???:sad:

dickt360
Newbie Poster
2 posts since Sep 2006
Reputation Points: 10
Solved Threads: 0
 

Use the Linux install disk. There'll be an install option to erase and take over the entire drive, which is what you want to do. The Linux installer will do the rest.

John A
Vampirical Lurker
Team Colleague
7,630 posts since Apr 2006
Reputation Points: 2,240
Solved Threads: 339
 

What I would do, I would wipe the hard drive with killdisk, burn the ISO to a cd and boot off of it. Erase everything, then install linux.
Here's the free version
http://killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

TheNNS
Nearly a Posting Virtuoso
1,467 posts since Jul 2006
Reputation Points: 175
Solved Threads: 15
 

ubuntu is the way man easy free and they can even send u a cd

nytrokiss
Light Poster
47 posts since Jun 2006
Reputation Points: 10
Solved Threads: 5
 

have you ever heard of commas and punctuation?

Know how to write!!

TheNNS
Nearly a Posting Virtuoso
1,467 posts since Jul 2006
Reputation Points: 175
Solved Threads: 15
 

if you truly wnat to wipe the hd, you can use something like dd
1. boot from an install disk
2. locate partitions and or disk to be wiped (do not mount them)
3. run script
4. grab some beer/coffee/pizza (this will take a long time depending on size and iterations)

<strong> for (( i = 0;i<10;i++ )); do
    dd if=/dev/random of=dev/hda && dd if=dev/zero of=/dev/hda
   done</strong>

or if you have a bootable cd which has a tool called shred (knoppix,gentoo,debian,ubuntu), you can run this:
#this will take a long time, it will do 100 iterations(-n 100) of zeros (-z) forcing permissins obliteration (-f) and verbose (-v)

<strong>shred -vfz -n 100 /dev/hda
</strong>


hope this helps

sn4rf3r
Junior Poster
135 posts since Sep 2006
Reputation Points: 10
Solved Threads: 2
 

This article has been dead for over three months

Post: Markdown Syntax: Formatting Help
You
View similar articles that have also been tagged: