May 7, 2013

My 32 bit hard drive 160 GB is full of clutter from previous installations and I can't install any operating system because it will not recognize any hard drive as present. How do I clear the drive and format it again?

millgillo

repartition and mkfs...

You can skip the repartitioning if the partitions are of an acceptable size.

What are you trying to install? Usually it allows you to do that relatively easily.

With Fedora 17/18/19 it gets a bit tricky during installation - you have to select the storage, then click done. At that point it does a "pop-up" about reusing storage - delete the partitions and click on the "reclaim". When you continue it should then reuse the disk how it wants.

My cd copies of Ubuntu and Puppy linux will both work from the cd in the dvd player, but wont install to the hard drive because the hard drive is partitioned incorrectly and I did it wrong. I had it orginally as an NTSF partitioned drive. The remaining space for instlaling is less than 700 MB. How can I reformat and make it access the internet?
Newbie May 11, 2013

Any Linux installer should give you the option of just wiping the drive and letting the installer set up its own default partition layout. There's no reason you have to reuse what's already on the drive.

Hi

Can you post from live cd

Or put an image of gparted at imageshack

util-linux-ng 2.17.2 is what reads from fdisk -v -c !!!

I dont understand last post?

I agree with suicidaleggroll. IF you don't need to save any old data, get a Linux install iso, burn to DVD and install.
If the installer runs, but won't recognise there's a disk at all (regardless of format) then you've likely got a dying disk.

1 members found this post helpful.

First, there is really no such thing as a 32 bit hard drive. You simply have one or more 32 bit operating systems installed on the drive.

You could try using a Parted Magic live CD to repartition and reformat the drive: http://partedmagic.com/

Parted Magic is very well designed and is very easy to use. It will also allow you to backup any data you need to save before you reformat the drive.

If Parted Magic can not find the drive, then you definitely should rule out a hardware problem here.

When all else fails, I wipe the hard drive with zeros then partition and format, all using SystemRescueCD.

Wipe with zeros:
Dban or dd command

Partition:
gparted

Write down details (e.g. /dev/sda1 | / | ext4 | 18GB) for each partition created using gparted. This info needed for install once partitioning section is reached (choose "something else," manual, or custom).

Slackware and slack-based distros have necessitated my doing this on occassion.

Note: dd and using root seem to cause some users problems for some reason, but I just do what I know works. For details, you may PM me, if you feel like it.

Best wishes!