h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a hard drive (Seagate 20Mb) which I installed not long ago as a slave and which has something going on with it. I've installed Red Hat Linux on it and also a primary dos extension. In fdisk it also shows an extended dos partition, but when I try to divide the extended partition into extra drives or remove it, fdisk says there's no extended partition, and when I try to create an extended partition it says an extended partition already exists, but...

I've not really done anything with the Linux yet and I don't mind reinstalling it and starting from scratch, so does anyone know how to utterly wipe the hard drive - write zeroes to it so I can get rid of that extended partition and start with a completely clean drive?

Howdy, there are several programs that will overwrite teh hard drive several times to lose all information on it. Many of these programs are also free. Google these for some very good programs.

Analog X SuperShredder
(Free download.)

LSoft Active KillDisk
(Free download. Professional version available for $29)

Eraser
(Free download.)

AbsoluteShield Internet Eraser
(Free download, or buy for $34.)

I know the first two work pretty well.
(Information obtained from techTV.com)

Thanks, I'll check those out Always nice to meet another TechTV

Partition Magic.
And I dont think Hard drives have all 0s (or maybe 1s) on until you format them.

Long before I considered myself anything of a , one of Mrs Gosho's friends 'sorted out' our ailing Win98 pc. The system kept crashing, so he came over and did a bunch of things to it, one of which I recall involved (and I quote) "...writing zeroes to every bit of the hard drive", after which he reinstalled Windows. Now, I'm figuring that whatever program he used for that must have been on a floppy, cos you're wiping the OS off the disc.

I've removed the primary partition on my slave, also the non-dos (Linux) partition, but I can't get rid of the extended partition. fdisk keeps telling me that there are logical dos drives on it, but each time I... let me walk you through it.

fdisk
Option 5 - change current fixed disk (this next bit is laid out across the screen in table form which is almost impossible to reproduce here, and I've omitted the c: drive info)

Drv:
Mbytes: 19093 (and underneath that is the figure 8009)
Free: 24
Usage: 100%

Option 2: No 2 fixed disk
Option 4 - display partition info

Partition: 1
Status:
Type: Extended Dos
Volume label:
Mbytes:19069
System:
Usage:100%
The Extended DOS partition contains Logical DOS drives.
Do you want to display the logical drive information?... (Y/N) Yes

No Logical drives defined

Esc

Option 3: Delete Logical DOS drives

No Logical DOS drives defined

Esc

Option 2: Delete Extended DOS partition

Cannot delete Extended DOS partition while Logical DOS drives exist

Do you see how I'm going around in circles with this? I can't delete the partition because there are logical drives in it, yet it also says there are no logical drives defined

Are you sure your fdisk is of a version that can work on your whole drive and recognises a linux-disk?

Partition magic version 7 or 8 should be able to get rid of it

Doesn't that run to about $70? Don't have the wedge

Try to find someone who has it, and borrow the rescue diskettes for a day.

It sounds like the partition table on the drive has been corrupted. The best thing is to overwrite this with zeroes. Any sort of a program which allows you to look at physical sectors on a disk and change them should allow you to overwrite the partition table, after which you will be able to use FDISK to create new partitions on it. I can't remember exactly which sectors hold the partition table. Someone else might know.

i can't follow any of this, but i can say i have wiped my HD before. on a mac its called 'zero all data'. its a last resort when all other troubleshooting doesn't work.

you have to boot up from the system software disc which also has the wiping programme on it. after that you reinstall the OS.

sorry i can't be more help.

If you can boot Linux, try using the fdisk that comes with that - Windows fdisk has never been able to recognise Linux partitions and may get very confused by them.

The Linux partition has gone - I rebooted the pc yesterday before removing a (non-bootable) floppy which I forgot about. I remember seeing a message along the lines of "Kernel panic - unable to find INIT" The only remaining partition according to fdisk is the errant extended dos partition, which I never even created

I've downloaded Killdisk but won't have time to try it out until I get home from w**k later on today.

You could try a single floppy Linux distribution, eg Toms RootBoot. I think it should have fdisk on it to try.