12-17-2017, 06:23 PM
I was interested to read this thread as I'm in a similar position to the OP. I have an old desktop (actually a castaway from an office where I used to work). It still has WinXP installed, and assorted old folders/files. I was originally going to delete all the documents, keep WinXP (as there are still one or two Windows programs that I use occasionally) and install LL or another distro as dual boot.
But WinXP is playing up - won't boot, hangs, won't shut down - and it seems clear there are some corrupted files/sectors on the hard disk. I have run chkdsk in XP, which has helped a bit but not cured the problem....
So I plan to "wipe" the entire hard disk and do a clean install of Linux. Simple, I suppose. But it seems I have a choice of at least three ways of doing so:
1) use GParted to delete all partitions, create new partition table, and set up and format new partitions. I'm just not totally sure that this will sort out any bad sectors than may have been caused by WinXP in, for example, its MBR;
2) use DBAN to "wipe" everything. I have never used DBAN before but I gather it is effective;
3) use the "dd" command in the terminal to delete/overwrite the entire disk contents. I saw this suggested in another forum. The suggested command was
I'd be interested in comments as to the pros and cons of each of these options.
But WinXP is playing up - won't boot, hangs, won't shut down - and it seems clear there are some corrupted files/sectors on the hard disk. I have run chkdsk in XP, which has helped a bit but not cured the problem....
So I plan to "wipe" the entire hard disk and do a clean install of Linux. Simple, I suppose. But it seems I have a choice of at least three ways of doing so:
1) use GParted to delete all partitions, create new partition table, and set up and format new partitions. I'm just not totally sure that this will sort out any bad sectors than may have been caused by WinXP in, for example, its MBR;
2) use DBAN to "wipe" everything. I have never used DBAN before but I gather it is effective;
3) use the "dd" command in the terminal to delete/overwrite the entire disk contents. I saw this suggested in another forum. The suggested command was
Code:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1MI'd be interested in comments as to the pros and cons of each of these options.