I used Nuke to erase a customers hdd that he wanted to wipe completely clean.

http://www.linux.com/feature/48092

I used DOD short and after it had finished. I attempted to install the OS and it told me that it could even though I know that the hdd is present and it ok. It was working fine until I used Nuke. I attempted to create new partition and it told me that it could see the hdd. Is there something that I am doing wrong?

If anyone wants a great tutorial on Darik boot and Nuke here it tis:

http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=v...o-wipe-a-drive

I think you mean "could NOT" in two places....

Something similar came up a few days ago---I have always assumed that something like "dd" makes a drive look like new---ready to add partitions.

Can you boot up from liveCD and see the drive with fdisk -l?

I tried to use a xp cd (my client wants to use xp) and it says that it cannot see a hdd but the Bios is seeing it ok. The hdd worked fine before using "Nuke". I also tried using the restore cdrom from the manufacturer and it also says that is cannot see any hdd. I will try a linux distro to see if it can see anything. I will use fdisk.

You nuked the drive and now you complain you can't see it?

Windows doesn't like drives with a damaged partition table. You can write out a new one with cfdisk, but start with the -z option to ignore any invalid partition tables.

jlinkels

'fdisk' would tell you something like you haven't got a valid partition table.

1. boot from a live CD
2. zero the MBR: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/whateverdevice bs=512 count=1
3. run fdisk or any other partition tool you want

[edit] Be extremely careful with dd - that can destroy the partition table on a disc you don't want to erase ...

I did a:

then I created the partition using fdisk:

I then formatted the NTFS partition using mkntfs -v /dev/sda1. I also made the partition active. I once again tried windows XP pro cdrom and it still is not able to see any hdd. Could it be that I didnt copy the start and ending sectors of the hdd prior to doing this ???????????????????

I presume you mean 'dd if=/dev/zero of-/dev/sda bs=512 count=1' ? Otherwise you create a 512B file named 'whateverdevice'.

That would be a problem; 'sda' is the raw device; you would have overwritten the MBR and all. After you create a partition (or several of them) you need to format the partition, *not* the drive - so instead of 'sda' you'd use something like 'sda1'.

when running fdisk, what is the starting sector and the end sector for this drive?

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techl...256EBA00749D6D

I cannot figure this out!

Darik Nuke, Nuked my hdd and now it is not usable. What a piece of @#$#@$#@$. Beware.

That might be, but you were given some advice about recovering. The only thing I have seen is that you cleaned the partition table AND formatted the drive (not the partition) as NTFS which was said to be wrong.

Did you also read and follow the other advices?

jlinkels

Therefor use cfdisk -z to ignore the invalid table.

jlinkels

Just dd the mbr as shown above.
Don't create new partition tables or create a filesystem.
Boot from Windows CD.

This reply generated by maintaining loggin period.

So ignore..!!

Thanks for your useful imformation,,

gentlemen,

I just punched myself in the mouth for being so naive. This Gateway laptop M285-e Touch screen has Sata drives. The poorly packaged Gateway Restore Cdrom for this model does not have the correct drivers for the controller for this laptop(confirmed by MPC Computers formerly Gateway). It makes sense because I could load Ubuntu on it fine but I couldnt load XP pro or the XP 2005 Tablet Edition Gateway Restoration cdrom. So to make a long story short it had nothing to due with Darik's Nuke so I take all that was said badly about the product back thus inserting foot in mouth as I type. Many thanks to all. Now I have to figure out how I can add the driver to the system so that the restore cdrom will recognize the Sata controller.