HDD FROZEN - 17 GiB - missing!! Trying to create multi-boot system!
 

Ok, so I am completely green. Was sick of not having control of my PC; Sparky had obviously been Hijacked. So determined to maintain my sense of privacy, I @Kill-Disked my partitions and installed Ubuntu. I realised I had to format the drive and create new partitions. So I found an article discribing exactly how to partition my drive for Ubuntu 10.10 with space left for another OS if desired. Being fresh to Ubuntu, I realised that it would be wise to re-install Vista so that I can have immediate access to my email etc. The partition scheme did not allow me to add Vista, and would not read the 150GiB of unused space (even though I had 3 primaries and the unused was labeled as logical, logical?). So I @Kill-Disked the pooter AGAIN. Then I used Parted Magic to re-format and create a boot-manager-partition (which I do not know how to do yet) and a Windows primary and Ubuntu on the extension.

But now I find I only have 232.88 GiB of the original 250.6 I had.

What the hay!? I know formating takes space, but 17 GiB???

Only Gparted can read this drive, by the way. I have UltimateBootCd, now and no utility on it can even find a hard drive!! I don't get it.

I feel the only way to gain control of this is to start from scratch - Unfreezing my HDD and losing the warrenty to the drive, but gaining access to all of my space. I worry that whoever Hijacked Sparky in the first place has some control over my HDD. I had no access to my host file when I was in Vista.

I hope you realise that I only understand half of what I am saying.

So! I want to:

Gain access to my HDD (WDC WD2500BJKT-75F4 TO)

Overwrite entire disk

format disk?

Partition disk for Vista and Ubuntu with a Boot-Manager-Primary P.

I intend to upgrade the Vista to Win 7 with an upgrade disk I have. Though, I don't know if that will work, as I have Vista Home Premium and the upgrade is to Win 7 Ultimate.

*sigh* Thend.

The easiest way for a newbie to install is to let ubuntu do the partitioning.
Then use gparted-live-cd to resize.

If you want both vista and Ubuntu, it would be better to install vista first. Let it use the whole drive if necessary and then when you go to install Ubuntu, you can resize (shrink) the vista partition and create partitions for Ubuntu during the install.

There's no reason to use killdisk.
If your reinstalling vista, erase all partitions during installation.
You can select how much space you want to use there.
As far as ubuntu install it aferwards as it will locate windows and make it bootable.

Wow, you've asked several questions.

1. You have a Vista CD to reinstall Vista?
2. Do you have a Knoppix boot disk or other live CD that you like such as Ubuntu, Kubuntu.
You may have to try different versions of these, but I recommend Knoppix as the better
option.
3. Boot Knoppix, and if you REALLY want to blast everything off the drive, open a terminal,
sudo su, and type
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda conv=notrunc,noerror. Do this for all your partitions seen
using gparted.
4. Using gparted create the partitions you want. Windows primary partition. Logical for
Ubuntu
5. Reinstall Vista which should format the partition.
6. Install Ubuntu which also should format the logical partition and setup a boot manager
and produce a menu.lst file in /boot/grub. You must install Windows first as Ubuntu
'sees' it, whereas Windows may trash a Ubuntu install on the primary partition.
7. If you have trouble booting with Ubuntu it may be due to a bug with the way some versions
would call the hard drive hda or sda when installing but look for the other name when
booting. Sorry about vagueness, can't remember details so Google it maybe. Why don't you
Debian 'Lenny' a spin? Ubuntu is based on Debian anyway.

8. Can't help with the Windows stuff, but suggest you do everything you want to install in
Windows first, then install Ubuntu/Debian.

As suggested, do Vista then Ubuntu. As for the "missing" 17 Gig, that will probably just be GiB versus GB (search wikipedia for gibibyte). The hard disk manufacturers have been scamming us all since the beginning.

Yeah, I guess I am less worried about how to partition and more interested in unlocking my HDD. I used to have more space, it isn't the ol' wool trick. Why is the HDD locked anyways - what purpose does that serve?

I am a perfectionist...no, that's not right...for lack of a better way to put it, I am being anal about doing a perfect simple wipe of my hard drive. I really don't like the fact that there is a password on my system that I do not have access to! Is that so wrong? I know it may not 'NEED' to be handled, but I want this taken care of.

And I really want to have a special partition to boot from. And then have the choice of choosing the OS I want.

I can't find clear instruction on how to accomplish that.

thankyou for your replies, by the way! 8]