Good Idea, Bad Idea: DBAN

First off, I would like to thank all the forum-goers for their advice and support from my last thread. I now pose yet another question I feel deserves its own thread.

I recently purchased a Compaq Presario sr2150nx Minitower from CompUSA.com. This desktop PC is to become my "test box" for running Linux. My question is whether I should wipe the hard drive using DBAN or find another route. I would create a recovery disk of course, but I have my doubts. The box states that up to 10GB is reserved for the system recovery software. Is this a good idea or a bad idea?

DBAN

 

A month or two ago, I bought a new, extremely cheap eMachines desktop. I used it for about two days with Vista installed before becoming fed up and DBanning the drive. I installed Ubuntu first, and then a couple of weeks later, XP followed. Probably didn't need to use DBan, but had a copy handy and it was extremely easy.

Have no idea about the system recovery system. I didn't get a CD with my machine, and if it ever had a recovery partition, it's gone now. LOL

 

I read somewhere that Windows Vista Home Basic was just a souped-up version of XP. I am currently using Home Premium on my laptop so losing Basic would not be a huge loss. Why did you install XP after using Ubuntu? Did that particular Linux distribution fail to meet your computing needs?

 

I don't know about bmwrob, but I installed XP as a virtual machine to run some business programs that won't run in Linux any other way. I don't think my Vista Home Premium is allowed to do that per EULA....but XP is liter, stable and compatible for that purpose. To game, I boot into Vista.

 

Audio didn't sound as good with Linux as with Windows. The machine has XP and Ubuntu installed - XP simply because I didn't like Vista. The version installed on my eMachines, I think, was Home Premium, though I don't really remember for certain.

 

First thing to do is make those recovery discs. You paid for the Windows OS on the Compaq. Even if you hate it (vista I assume?) and would never use it you may want to sell the PC to someone in a few years. Probly easier to sell the thing with a fresh copy of vista than Linux.
I just helped some friends make their recovery discs yesterday on an HP. The HP owner's manual clearly stated that you can only burn the recovery discs one time. Even suggested removing the recovery partition when done. I imagine they stick to the same corporate policy on the Compaq's. Something to check out. If so, the recovery partition is of no value to you anyway after making the discs so that's one less complication.
If you are sure you don't want to dual-boot then I don't think you'd even have to dban the HDD. Just use a GPartedLiveCD to delete all partitions and set the file system to ext3. Then when you toss the Linux CD in it'll recognize a usable file system and you should be good to go.
dban wouldn't hurt anything, but zero-filling the drive is a slow process.

If you decide to put vista back on with the recovery discs use GParted first to set the file system to NTFS. I tried to use recovery discs on my Acer laptop a couple of weeks ago. The discs would not work until I set the HDD filesystem to NTFS.