I can't format my hard drive, can i do it with knoppix?

**johnnymoha** · 03-29-2005, 05:25 AM

When i put in my emachines restore disk it says some stupid error message number umpteen sventy-five million. and When i try it from DOS it tells me my hard drive cannot be unmounted. What does this mean? I just want to completely wipe the hard drive. Thnx alot.

**UnderScore** · 03-29-2005, 05:41 AM

Boot knoppix with the following cheat code:
knoppix 2 vga=normal nodma nofstab

When it gives you a root prompt, type cfdisk.
Use the arrow keys to delete the partitions. Then Write the changes, answer with 'yes'. Then quit and either CTRL-ALT-DEL or use the reset button to reboot.
Now the HD has no partitions.

If you need to securely wipe the HD you can use a utility called dban - http://dban.sourceforge.net/

**johnnymoha** · 03-29-2005, 05:52 PM

Thanx. If I wipe it completely with no partitions left, can I partition it to fat32 using knoppix cd and then install windows with a restore disc? I know this probably depends on my retsore disc but anty help is greatly appreciated. Thnx again.

**OErjan** · 03-29-2005, 06:44 PM

you certainly should be able to. that is if the disk itself is sound.

**johnnymoha** · 03-30-2005, 06:23 AM

I tried the cfdisk thing in knoppix and deleted the ntfs partition and tried to make a new w95 fat32 partition then told it to be bootable and clicked write the partition table to the drive. said yes. rebooted and nothing is gone. What am i doing wrong??

**fingers99** · 03-31-2005, 06:52 PM

Not sure, but was the drive mounted read/write?

**OErjan** · 03-31-2005, 08:03 PM

eeeh, actually it should NOT be mounted AT ALL, and you must do it as ROOT.
type the comand (in a console)

Code:

sudo cfdisk

this SHOULD work.

**Prototype2121** · 04-09-2005, 05:04 AM

I seem to be having a problem involving formatting HD's too. As it is, my PC has 2 HDs, the C: drive being a 30GB NTFS disk I wanna leave alone for XP, since we all know XP gets touchy when you start to mess with C:. D: on the other hand (hdb), is a 13GB drive I just wanna format clean, wipe everything out, and turn it into a fat32 for use with Knoppix, booting off of the CD and using the HD for storage. That way I'll be able to do all my programming in Linux, and Windows XP will still be able to access the files on the HD.

So, I ran QTParted, and after making sure hdb was unmounted, I told it to format the sucker into fat32. I committed it, and after doing its thing, it told me everything was cool. But when I went to go mount the HD, Knoppix said some rather nasty things to me. "Could not mount device. Wrong fs type. Bad option. Bad superblock on /dev/hdb1." Basicly, I know its saying that the only partition on my second HD is bunk, but I don't know why it is so angry at me, seeing as how QTParted told me everything is alright. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there some way I can try using cfdisk on hdb(secondary HD I wanna format)?

I just find it strange, since it will let me mount hda2, which is the main WinXP NTFS partition, and let me look at all those files, but screams bloody murder whenever I try to mount the HD I just formatted. Strange part is, I never had this sort of problem back when I first tried Linux, doing somewhat the same system. C: for Win 98, and D: for Red Hat. That time around, Red Hat formatted D:, and never had any problems mounting it. I can't figure out why its not working this time around....

And I know its not a disk problem, because the BIOS sees it just fine, and even XP can see it, it just now says the equivilent of "I see it, but I'm not sure exactly WHAT it is...." when I try to look at the drive. Any ideas?