cant erase hard drive
 

I'm running Xandros2 Standard

I have a second hdd set to slave that has a failed install of Knoppix 3.3 on it. I would like to erase this botch up and install Xandros2 delux on this drive.

I tried setting it to master and setting bios to boot from cdrom and loading Xan2delux over the the top, but it came up with a pic of the penguin and a screen full of scrolling code and stopped dead.

I then tried setting it to slave and trying to erase if with Xandros 2 file manager, but it said that I don't have permission to delete. I was logged in as administrator if that makes a difference.

Is there a peice of software that will let me erase it? Or maybe a command (i've never typed a command before, so be nice)

There is no windows partition or anything on it either....that is the past.

Thanks
Phil

Having never used Xandros I can't really tell you how it would work on there.
I can, however, tell you with Slackware. During the install process you have
two options that can alter your present drive. The first is to run the cfdisk
program, which is a curses based program for partitioning any hard disk drive.
With cfdisk you can setup your partition tables, with a lot of variables.

The second thing is that during the setup you have a TARGET option which is
where you choose the partitions where you want to install the OS. With each
one you choose there's the option to format the partition. This doesn't totally
erase the disk, as a low-level format would do; or writing the drive to
zeroes. But for normal purposes it will get rid of your old installation.

If you want to totally erase the drive, such as you would do if you rubbed
a magnet against a floppy disk, you should determine the make of your hard
drive. Then browse to the manufacturer's website and get a disk utility so that
you can do a proper low-level format, or write the drive to zeroes. If you're
interested in doing that, and need more help, post back.

There may be another method, such as formatting before installing with some
open source app, but I'm not aware of it.

If you want to empty it completely, you could run fdisk.
Delete the partition(s) then recreate them.
Or recreate the filesystem (formatting), you have to unmount it to do that.

The commands:
# fdisk /dev/hdb <-- BE CAREFUL! /dev/hda=primary master /dev/hdb=primary slave.
You don't want to erase the wrong disk, make sure you know which one you're dealing with.

Formatting:
# umount /dev/hdb
# mke2fs -j /dev/hdb
that is, if you want ext3. If you want ext2 skip the '-j'.

Once again, make sure you know which disk you're working on!

use fdisk, cfdisk, or partition magic from bootable floppy :)