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    Should I completely re-format my HD?

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by chain.saw, Aug 13, 2008.

  1. chain.saw

    chain.saw Newbie

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    Hi all,

    Got my first laptop xps m1530, also first time vista user... not enjoying it. So I decided to dual boot with ubuntu and need to remove a couple of the dell partitions. I shrunk my drive using vista, which didnt really work, and then successfully with gparted and somewhere along the line this killed the recovery partition and media direct, no real biggie as I have all the disks. Diagnostics still works ok but I have a boot disk for that also. I was planning to one pass zero the whole thing with killdisk or GWSCAN (is it as simple as this??) but have heard contradicting information for and against.

    So should I just wipe the lot or at least keep the eisa partition?
     
    chain.saw, Aug 13, 2008
    #1
  2. ScifiMike12

    ScifiMike12 Drinking the good stuff

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    If you don't use any of the partitions, then I would advise you to completely erase everything. I never liked MediaDirect or used Dell's backup OS partition (too much crap in there... ;)).
     
    ScifiMike12, Aug 13, 2008
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  3. Fountainhead

    Fountainhead Notebook Deity

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    I'd think something like killdisk is a bit unnecessary, unless you really need a secure wipe. Just use your OS DVD to partition, format, and install.
     
    Fountainhead, Aug 13, 2008
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  4. chain.saw

    chain.saw Newbie

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    Cheers to you both I was really wondering if I could safely delete the eisa partition but I have the boot disc for the diagnostics so I asume it will run the same. I might check that out though before I delete it as I only need three spare partitions. So I think I will go with a vista partition, ubuntu & swap with a shared ubuntu home partition :)
     
    chain.saw, Aug 14, 2008
    #4
  5. Relativity17

    Relativity17 Notebook Evangelist

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    Yeah, it's safe.

    My primary partition: Vista (200.07 GB NTFS), Swap (3.72 GB), Linux (29.09 GB ext3).
     
    Relativity17, Aug 14, 2008
    #5