partition probs
Forum: HD Install
Topic: partition probs
started by: zenu68
Posted by zenu68 on Oct. 05 2005,21:58
hello! after having installed this onto my hard drive I decided I wanted to re-partition/format it and reinstall XP as i'm still just learning linux. Well I used FDISK to delete the 2 non-DOS partitions then I went to create a new partition (still using fdisk), but when I choose to use the full capacity of my hard drive it only creates one that is 10MB. It should be 80GB right? I've been trying cfdisk from the live cd and changing the type but each one I create with the exception of FAT32 is a non-DOS, 10MB one. It even shows the maximum size of the disk is 80GB in cfdisk. Hopefully someone here can tell me what i'm doing wrong/not doing at all. Remember i'm just a newb 
Posted by skaos on Oct. 06 2005,09:56
Boot the live CD and run this command:dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
This will wipe the master boot record which includes the partition table (please note that this effectively will make all data on the disk inaccessible). Rerun fdisk. If this doesn't work, you could wipe the whole disk:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
Posted by zenu68 on Oct. 06 2005,16:09
Thanks for the replyI tried this but it's telling me /dev/hda is not a directory, and I get an error when I try to mount it first. Am I correct in assuming it needs to be mounted first? I've also tried to re-create the partition table using 'fdisk' within linux, same result.