Clear Hard drive

[Shadow121]

So i got a new 320gb hard drive and decided i woul install Fedora Core 8 onit and such, after a while i came to the conclusion that i didnt really like it as well as i had hoped to.

Upon trying to figure out how to clear the hard drive all failed and i attempted to get Boot Nuke which is a program that'll clear off a hard drive upon insertion into a floppy device.

That failed too. So, could someone help/tell me how the crap i would clear Fedora off that hard drive and be able to hook it back up to this one I'm on now for extra storage. mainly the clearing off i know how to get it as storage and such O_o'

Thanks.

[deadimp]

Use a partition manager to delete that partition or just format the drive. Be sure you add a partition back on there.
For software, I'd suggest GParted. If you have an OS on a different CD you ought to be able to use it (though I think it's only supported for the Gnome windows manager), and if not just burn yourself a copy of the LiveCD and use that.
Another partition manager is QtParted. Not sure what OS's it can run on though.

[Shadow121]

kk, though i was searching google a bit here and there and just stumbled a crossed http://www.ehow.com/how_1000631_hard-drive-linux.html

It has steps with FDisk, would that help me any?

[Tau_Zero]

Ultimate Boot CD
I've had to use this once or twice when things didn't want to format. Download, burn to CD, boot from cd. In the hard disk tools, hard disk wiping tools, the "Active@ KillDisk Free Edition" should wipe that sucker clean. Then your OS install disk of choice should provide a "format this drive' when going through the install process.
P.S. - It's good to have this disk around. Many other good tools on there when you've got problems

[cyberxzt]

hmm question sorta about this, my teacher is letting me take hard drives outta my old school's computers and he is going to take a magnet to all of them to clear the harddrives (so i dont get access to the grading programs lol), aint using a magnet bad or would it still work?

[Tau_Zero]

You'd need a pretty strong magnet to pull that off. While magnets easilly fubar'd a floppy, it's much harder to do so for a hard drive. From an old PC World article:
"The same goes for hard drives. The only magnets powerful enough to scrub data from a drive platter are laboratory degaussers or those used by government agencies to wipe bits off media."
So he's probably not going to wipe it. I think that Active Killdisk program allows you to write over the data a number of times you specify with crap data so that you need one hell of a recoverist to even think about getting the data back. If there's not one on there (i forget), he's going to need to look for a program that does do it if he's paranoid someone's going to recover an regularly erased disk.

[Shadow121]

Whelp, i aint got any magnets or any type of that :P but i do have the Live CD which is being a bish.

I flip in the CD boot up, login comes on up and such but when i login with fedora for Live CD it goes to load but screen goes black so imma need a better way i'm thinkin :3

Yeh, the LiveCD and OS have GParted but i cant load up from live CD and such.

I need to wipe it clean btw, so i can use my utils to turn it into a reg storage crud.

@Tau_Zero
i'll try that. Is there a way to mount it on a CD and have it boot before the linux OS?

Edit: Came across http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/ while searching GParted LiveCD type thing. would this work?

[Tau_Zero]

Yea. When you first turn your comp on, go into the BIOS and set it to boot from cd first. If you burned the CD as a bootable cd, it should boot right into the menu with all of the apps.

[Shadow121]

it boots from the CD but it doesn't give me like the thing the reg running OS offers which is the option to delete the partition things :3

Edit: I was told i could hook it up as a master on this PC then my windows as a slave. From there couldn't i boot from my windows and use FDisik on windows to slap the drive upside the head and clear it?

Edit2: Could a mod/admin lock this, i'll figure it out sooner or later, and i've sent a message to WD Support about it.

Thanks for the help all the while ya'll

[Eric@TLG]

when i wanna delete everything from my hard drive i just use a windows disc and delete the partition on the hard drive.