I am a long time user of Windows 98/me and I want to know how to do a scandisk of a hard disk that I am using to install a distribution onto. I know that some of the disks are bad, but I cannot see any preliminary check or advise on bad sectors etc when the installation takes place.

Cheers

When you install Mandrake 9.0, you have the option of formatting your partitions and checking for bad blocks prior to actual install.

After install, do 'man fsck' and it will tell you all you need to know.

Hokay ... that is a good start. I did the formatting and checking, but I am looking towards the setting up of a distribution on a CD where you follow the steps set up in an initial expert installation, on a whole bunch of PC's.

We have a lot of old manky refurbished PC's here from US and I want to find a way of making them operational and avoid the loathsome legal issues of pre-installing WinOS's. Mandrake is kinda friendly to look at, and I thought that this would be a good one to look at, however I do not know what to do about preliminary checking of hard disk volumes.

Now that this is out of the way, thanks for the information.

:-0)

You can do that with Mandrake. I believe there is an option to save to a floppy for making an automated install exactly the same as the one just run. I don't know what it is since I only stumbled on it once and I don't use it (at most I have 3, maybe 4 PCs at home to do).

Check it out.