Hey there
I am having some problem with my BackTrack and i decided to re-install it. As i was told i should use the following command to format the whole Hard-Drive and then manually install it from the Live Cd

The command that i just gave doesnt work at all and the system gets frozen when is executed. Actually there is no sda in the dev directory. I have also tried instead of sda putting hda which seems to work (at least the system doesnt freeze) but it doesnt return.

Any ideas how can i reinstall my BackTrack without keeping any data or setting from the past?

Thanks for your time

how do you mean it doesn't return? if you run that against /dev/hda then if you have a big drive, it could takes aboslutely ages and ages, as it's got to write a 0 to every single solitary bit of drive space on the whole device. personally i'd guess this is more a case of backtrack users trying to be more careful than a non-security obsessed user needs to be, i wouldn't really worry to be honest. you can just delete the partitions on the disk if you wish.

Ok so if i can't write 0's to hda is somehow a way that i can erase everything and re-install the system. Well, unfortunately right now i can not even start BackTrack without Live-CD and that is because when i press F12 to change the first bootable devide in this case from CD-DVD to Hard-Drive it doesnt boot the Hard-Drive but it boots some kind of program which is related to check for my mac address
Anyway, as you said before what i can do is to delete my partion. I will be really happy and obliged to you if you could give me some further explanation on how to do it.

Many thanks for your time

Are you trying to wipe the whole drive or just a partition? If you're trying to wipe the drive, then dd will work. In fact, acid_kewpie was probably right - it was working, it will just take a long time. There is also the shred command - does about the same thing. Or you could download "The Ultimate Boot CD", it has DBAN (Derek's Boot And Nuke) which will wipe the drive (actually uses the shred command).

If you want to wipe just a partition, why not just repartition the drive?

Hey again
Well, what i want to do right now is to re-install BackTrack. The first problem comes when i run the BackTrack installer. The installation finishes directly which seems to me that it doesnt actually take place. Secondly this is also proven after rebooting the machine because when i boot from the hard-drive the system doesnt start and goes into an infinitive loop executing a program which as i said before looks like looking for my mac address.

Boot up Backtrack. Log in as root.

Click terminal, look at the partitions of your disk by command
delete all the partitions (assuming this is what you want as you did want to zero everything) in the disk by running command
inside cfdisk highlight each partition you want to delete and choose "delete" then "enter".

Create 2 partitions for Backtrack; one 5Gb say sda1 and 1Gb sda2. Highlight sda2 and choose "type", then enter 82 to make it a swap partition.

Highlight "write" and confirm with a "yes" to write the partition table.

Reboot

Install Backtrack in sda1.

I run BackTrack directly off my WinXP laptop using LILO.

Here are the particulars: Objective: Dual boot XP and BT

Used Partition Magic 7.0 to configure as follows 10 Gb Windows NTFS on hda1 30 Gb Second FAT32 on hda2 (shared and VM directories) 4 Gb for BT with ext2 on hda5 1 Gb Swap with ext2 on hda6

Install BT from CD (using 05022006 Beta) df -h shows above plus tmpfs 1 Gb then Start BT Installer > source /boot > Install to (/mnt/hda5) > Write MBR (/dev/hda) Be patient as this could take up to 30 minutes

Remove BT CDR and let system boot to newly installed HDD. Then type liloconfig in console and did the following: (1) Take expert option and install header or #1 - follow instructions (2) At prompt use third option for MBR (3) Then setup Linux - in my case used /dev/hda5 (4) Then setup Windows - in my case used /dev/hda1 which was marked active (5) Then install Lilo - mine hangs but just went to a prompt after a few seconds (6) When finished don't forget to run lilo so you will see both BackTrack and Windows set on Lilo - This is a critical step as not saved as with GRUB (7) Then vi or nano lilo.conf under /etc Under section for Linux bootable partition config begins make sure you set read only to read-write. If you do not do this you will not be able to boot your new installation. (8) Run lilo at a prompt as in #6 above so you see added Windows * BackTrack

Hope this helps.

Hey again
Well, I left dd to work for almost 8 hours and finally returned. I then tried to install BackTrack again and as i said in my previous posts it finished directly like no actual installation took place. I just tried as you said but unfortunately it can't read the device. The fact is that i boot from the live-cd and there is no /dev/sda. Unfortunately i can not boot from the hard-drive. Shall i try what you said but instead of sda replace with hda?

Thanks all for your support

There is another post I am answering. In it the OP had a problem of the Sata being recognised but did not function properly.

I asked the OP to check if it was a Sata II which some older mobo do not support because the technology did not come out at the time the mobo were sold. His confirmed that the disk is a Sata II.

If you can see't the disk by command "fdisk -l" then your disk may be a Sata II capable of transferring 3Mb/s. The older Sata I can only does 1.5Mb/s.

Some Sata II disks has a jumper to restrict the transfer rate back to 1.5Mb/s to enable them to function in older mobo.

Check your Sata disk now.

ok, fdisk -l returns:

Your hda looks big trouble to me.

A sector is always 512 bytes. Your disk has 63 sectors and 16 heads.

The total storage = 16*63*512 = 516,096 bytes.

That is about 1/160 of the 80Gb the disk supposed to hold.

According to the disk designation it is a Pata disk and not a Sata disk.

I believe the disk has been trashed by the way you assume it is a Sata.

I think your first priority is to establish if it is a Pata or Sata. Can you open the box and tell us if the disk has been connected by a ribbon cable or not?

A ribbon cable is 2" or 50mm wide. A Pata disk must be connected by a ribbon cable with either 40 or 80 wire conductors inside.

A Sata has a very narrow cable of about 8mm or les than 0.4" wide.

Tell us what you have got.

Is the above the only disk you have? That disk will prevent any operating from installing in your computer.

Well, the fact is that i've got an AMD 64b laptop and therefore i cant open the hard-drive. Is anything else I can do? I believe that worths to say that i have installed BackTrack many times in my computer without having any problem.

In the absence of any solid information from you I shall based my advice on what Linux tell me. A hda is a "Pata hard disk".

I believe you can run "fdisk /dev/hda" and use its advance features to impose your own number of sectors and heads.

Have a go with 63 Sectors and 255 heads, as they are the standard. Click "wirte" to write the partition table, reboot and confirm in the next boot up if the disk is back to normal or not.

If you do it right the total number of bytes should match the 80Gb.

I think the best solution is just to use a different reformat utility, like one that comes on a linux distro cd?
I can't remember if BT or BT2 has one but im pretty sure they would.
Good Luck Anyway.
Luke

Hey again
Unfortunately I have never done this before and i would be once more again happy if i have your help. Basically i cant figure out how to set up the partition table with 255 heads as you said. Could anyone illustrate me an example of how to do it?

Thanks for your time