Formatting/clearing HD of Linux.

Hi, I have a Mini 9 with Dell's Ubuntu 8.04 on it. Is there a way I can completely format it? I'm thinking of selling my Mini 9 since I don't use it, and I tried the whole "USB Stick" install and that failed, so I'm thinking of just formatting it completely then after selling it, letting the user come up with a solution of installing whatever OS they want. (I'm going to tell the user about this, obviously )

Please tell me if this is not the way to go, or any alternatives.

 

1. You could use the live cd of system rescue cd. Use gparted to format the drive as you see fit.

2. You could just do a fresh install of ubuntu.

I would probably just format to ntfs so that your buyer can install windows. If he or she wants linux, my guess is they already know how to format the drive during installation.

 

There's always DBAN if you want to go the extra mile and actually overwrite your data so that it can't be recovered (at least not easily... if you want all the gory details see this).

 

Yeah....or just Gparted LiveCD boot and format the whole sucker to ntfs for the buyer....easily done. If you're worried about the FBI , then an overwrite program like above can be employed to Nuke it, but it's amazing what they can recover after a DoD wipe..... I think Sulfuric Acid is the only true remedy, or fire/smelting, etc....physical destruction

 

I don't have a CD/optical drive guys, so how should I do a fresh install? I tried using a USB stick and it failed.

Let me tell you the process I went through:

1. I downloaded "Minimal Ubuntu" from this link: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...tion/MinimalCD
2. I burned the ISO onto a CD that could fit it (it was a small file, 11 mb, but I burnt it onto a 700 mb CD anyway)
3. I copied all the CD files onto a USB Flash Drive.
4. I plugged the USB flash drive into my Mini 9, and attempted to go into the BIOS, then boot it by using 0, and it either could not recognize my USB stick or it could not find the operating system.

Anyone have any idea what I should do? Am I doing something wrong here? The USB flash drive got all 11mb of the Linux files so I don't think something was missing. It had a file that said "Boot" on it or something.

 

You want to clear/erase a HDD and don't have an optical drive?
If you have an USB stick there is no need to install a (small) Linux distro.
Simply download Bootable Disk Creator for DOS version of KillDisk (Free) (USB Flash & Floppy) from this page and follow the instructions there.
It will erase the entire HDD with one-pass zero's ( if you can boot from an USB stick that is).
Cheers.

 

You can also use unetbootin if you wanted to install the distro from USB, if you want to just clear the drive Baserk's advice is good

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

And of course on that DBAN page I linked to above there's a USB version...

 

Well initially I was going to do the USB stick install, but at this point I was getting frustrated and I was thinking of getting rid of the laptop. I'm going to try out your ideas later (for the USB stick install) and this time, if it doesn't work again, I think I am just going to completely wipe the drive.

 

the wife has a recent 2 gig eeePC, and my daughter an MSI Wind....I bought an external CD/DVD drive on sale at CompUSA....just to note, that thing is handy to have just for the second drive....I use it with my Dell when Copying CD's. Just a thought

 

Yeah I think I'm just going to give in and buy an external CD drive