Re: Reformatting hard disk.
- From: Shadow_7 <wwwShadow7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:35:04 -0000
Now I want to do a low level format on /dev/hda and start all over. I
have already tried the trick of using a DOS fdisk from a floppy to
zero out the MBR:
A: fdisk /mbr
That may have made things worse, I don't know.
The newer windows method is fixmbr. Or something like that.
There is a dd command that will zero out the mbr first block but I
forget what the exact string is.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda count=1 bs=512
NOTE: fdisk /MBR does NOT zero out the MBR. I puts the windows
stuff/bootloader into the MBR. With a zero'd out MBR, you cannot boot
anything off of the drive until you run fdisk /MBR or fixmbr in windows,
or install grub or lilo to the MBR. Granted that it's hard to run fdisk
/MBR in windows when it requires you to reboot before you've had a chance
to run it. Thank goodness for grub boot cd's and floppies. Also note
that the partition table is also in that first 512 bytes, so you'll likely
need to repartition it after running that dd command.
Here are some specs on the drives from dmesg: hda: ST3250824A, ATA DISK
drive
hdb: Maxtor 6Y080P0, ATA DISK drive
The /hda drive is a recent 250MB drive. Windows 2000 however sees it as
a 133MB drive.
There's a motherboard limitation on older boards that only recognizes
about that much of a drive larger than that. Not much of a problem in
linux as you can boot from it and use all of the drive in most cases.
Just make sure your boot partition is in that first 133MB seen by the
motherboard. In windows you're pretty much screwed and can only use 133MB
of that 250MB drive. At least until you upgrade your motherboard and cpu,
or bios.
HTH
.
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