i want format hard disk that installed opensuse 11.1 os into a clean hard disk like a new hard disk that haven’t been use.
i dun want to use it for opensuse anymore, because i already installed opensuse in another hard disk and this hard disk i want use for others os.
anyone know how to do it?
eveckc wrote:
> i want format hard disk that installed opensuse 11.1 os into a clean
> hard disk like a new hard disk that haven’t been use.
most hard disk sold today do not come ‘blank’, instead they are ready
for use with the predominate Redmond choice of the day, and that has
lately been with one partition filling the entire disk and fat32
installed (i think…or maybe vfat, or NTFS…i don’t really know as
when i buy a new one i immediately install Linux on the whole thing,
using the Linux fs i need)…
the safest way to do what you want is to unplug all other disks in
the machine and put in a live cd or install dvd and boot to runlevel 3
and launch parted (from a command line) give it the command:
parted [options] [device [command [options…]…]]
see man parted to help you fill in the [blanks], i can’t do that for
you because i have no idea how many different partitions you may
already have there…which file system you want to install…etc…
well, wait a minute: do you have, or have you had data on that disk
which you whould wish no one can ever see? if so, you need to read up
on how to “wipe” the disk, and THEN format it back to as new (or as
close as you can get it)
there are other tools sold to Redmond users which also work, but i
don’t know which are good, or not…
–
palladium
Have a lot of fun…
On 2009-11-10, eveckc <eveckc@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> i want format hard disk that installed opensuse 11.1 os into a clean
> hard disk like a new hard disk that haven’t been use.
> i dun want to use it for opensuse anymore, because i already installed
> opensuse in another hard disk and this hard disk i want use for others
> os.
> anyone know how to do it?
Start Yast, go to System, Partitioner. There, delete the partitions from the
HD.
PS: Choose the correct HD to delete from. 
–
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
… or download the tool from the manufacturer of the HDD, there will be a way to restore to factory, or “low level format”
If you have sensitive info anywhere on the drive wipe the drive partitions first with a wipe program.
Then open Yast->hardware->partitioning and delete the partitions as this will restore the drive to factory. Someone mentioned that new harddrives come pre formatted for the factory with fat32 or something. This is totally false. The factory low level formats the drive which simply puts the drives EEC bytes at sector 0, records a very generic partition table to the drive and writes a blank boot sector (all 0’s).
What the wipe program does is writes 0’s to whole drive many times to eliminate any chance of recovery of previous information
What Yast partitioning or any other for that matter does is write a new partition table after the EEC bytes. And if you create new partitions they are recorded in the table and also on the disk surface (formatted with filesystem you selected).
Summary:
If you delete all partitions from the drive, you get a crisp clean HDD as if from the factory ready for use as a medium for OS or Data or both.
:\
thanks for all reply! actually the hard disk that i want to format have some error with the partition. The partition detail is different with another hard disk that install opensuse by using the same method.
hard disk that i use now:
Hard Disks:
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda3
partition for hard disk that i want to format:
Hard Disks:
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part1
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part5
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part6
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part7
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part8
/dev/sda
there are no partition in /dev/sda.
anyone know why it look like this?
Unless you post some useful information it’s difficult for us to know what to advise.
Boot a live cd and get us fdisk -l
Parted Magic will do all you need and you could even get us a nice screenshot of Parted.
On 2009-11-11, eveckc <eveckc@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> thanks for all reply! actually the hard disk that i want to format have
> some error with the partition. The partition detail is different with
> another hard disk that install opensuse by using the same method.
>
> hard disk that i use now:
> Hard Disks:
> /DEV/SDA
> /dev/sda1
> /dev/sda2
> /dev/sda3
>
> partition for hard disk that i want to format:
> Hard Disks:
> /DEV/MAPPER/DDF1_GGRAID
> /dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part1
> /dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part5
> /dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part6
> /dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part7
> /dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part8
> /DEV/SDA
>
> there are no partition in /dev/sda.
> anyone know why it look like this?
I recently replaced the first HD (system & backups, as my /home is on a
second drive) of my machine with a spare from my brother. He only uses SATA
now, so he gave me 2 IDE drive of 300 GB. (I really like my brother)
Anyway, that drive had the same kind of weird organisation. In my case, I
have a /dev/sda, in which I can’t create patitions. It’s mapped to
/dev/mapper/hpt45x_bahaaaicgd, in which I created partitions:
/dev/mapper/hpt45x_bahaaaicgd_part1 /
/dev/mapper/hpt45x_bahaaaicgd_part2 swap
/dev/mapper/hpt45x_bahaaaicgd_part3 /mnt/windows (still empty)
/dev/mapper/hpt45x_bahaaaicgd_part4 /mnt/backups
From what I understand, the drives were once used in a RAID configuration. I
tried many things in Linux and Windows to remove this mapping (partitioner,
Gparted, resetting the mbr, …) but I couldn’t remove it.
From what my brother tells me, I should probably download a a tool from the
manufacturor, to make a low-level format.
I don’t bother with it. In Linux, I have
/dev/mapper/hpt45x_bahaaaicgd_part1
/dev/mapper/hpt45x_bahaaaicgd_part2
… instead of
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
… so what? I don’t care.
And in Windows, you can’t even see these descriptions.
So, you have 2 choices:
- go find the tool to do a low-level format.
- Just delete partitions
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part1
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part5
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part6
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part7
/dev/mapper/ddf1_GGRAID_part8
… and consider your drive ready for use.
–
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
Few things.
-
Do NOT do a low level format, your Disk Heads are not as powerful as the kit used by manufacturers, you cannot do as good a job, since a very very long time.
-
As Disk is intended for re-use, by the OP there’s no need for paranoia.
-
Should disks be going out of your hands, try something like Darik’s Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing which is a Live CD, geared up for secure wiping.
Sometimes the GUI tools fail, with weird partition tables, or there’s simply many partitions to delete, so the command line can be faster.
Quick Method to zero a partition table, is simply to write the first block of the drive with zero’s. Though gpart(8) can help recover data if you do that by accident, and zero-ing whole platter is insufficient against forensic analysis.
If ‘sdb’ is the disk intended to be repartitioned :
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=4k count=1
Excellent advice. It’s been at least seven years since I had to low-level-format a HD. Pen drives, on the other hand…
Can anyone help me format disk too ? i backup all my data with Dmailer BackUp Software and i try to format but i only have a windows xp but not bootable disk is any way to format it and install windows ?
Can anyone help me format disk too ? i backup all my data with Dmailer BackUp Software and i try to format but i only have a windows xp but not bootable disk is any way to format it and install windows ?
Parted Magic will format your disk,
windows xp but not bootable disk
the disk should be bootable, unless it is a vendor thing.
I am not sure where openSUSE fits in here, can you explain?
To the OP: a simple solution is to use Parted Magic and use the ‘Erase hard drive’ tool or whatever it’s called. I used it once and it wrote zeros all over the HD, deleting all existing data. No need to fiddle about with partitions ;), though that is also an option.
For sensitive data though, you should consider some other tool like robopensuse mentioned in his last post.