How to re-format hdd

I have an old computer with an older version of Zorin on it. How do I re-format the HDD to delete the old Zorin program?

Hi,

either use Gparted in the live CD or download a copy of it, see the partitioning guide for more help:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

When I fist started using Linux formatting things seemed weird to me, when you tell it to format, it only does the partition table, it doesn't actually clear the rest of the data, and I have seen this cause issues with an install on an install. So that means you will need to do a full format on the drive or a wipe on the drive or whatever you want to call it. The best way I have found to do this is the following

warning if done wrong this can destroy your system
warning In some rare cases doing this may cause the drive to be unusable
warning This will remove all data from the drive
warning said data will not be recoverable
warning you have been warned

Code:

sudo dd bs=1000 count=<# of kilobytes on system> if=/dev/zero of=</dev/device>

For example, If my system were 120 gigabytes, then and the drive were say /dev/sdb then I would use the following

Code:

sudo dd bs=1000 count=120000000 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

This process will likely take forever, but it is setting all the bits on the device to "0", when complete it will look something like this.

Code:

120000000+0 records in
120000000+0 records out
120000000000 bytes (120 GB) copied, 50.6178 s, 2.4 GB/s


Then you can install and let the CD take over for you!

Hi Linx, never been too technical when it comes to formatting using the Terminal, but there should also be caution mentioned about low-level formatting which can render some drives useless. I feel GParted offers enough for most users that are used to the Graphical interface - alternatively there are tools like Nuke and Boot or DBAN which are also good.

Using GParted I just delete all partitions then create new - no worries about having to do the reformatting at point of install!

I haven't ever seen a drive that stopped working after formatting.

I once had a friend that said they tried it and they weren't able to use the drive after, but whne I looked at it they did it incorrectly, took a few seconds to fix.

Thanks for the information!

Hi Linx, as I have stated elsewhere, the little grey cells are dying off - I remember where this could go wrong - and I haven't seen it in modern BIOS screens - but there was an option in the days and IT kit of Windows 95 where in the BIOS there was a 'low-level format' option - that was where the danger lay!

I think I did it on my Fujitsu drive on my first PC with 1 Gb drive which I paid for - a P120 just before MMX came out - which I upgraded with an 'Evergreen' AMD 400 processor!

I updated my original post to reflect this information.
adding "warning In some rare cases doing this may cause the drive to be unusable"

Always better safe than sorry.