[Gllug] Re:wiping a partition

[Chris Bell]

On Thu 02 Sep, Tethys wrote:
> 
> 
> john gennard writes:
> 
> >Just one point, however. Tethys, is 'unusable' a typo for 'usable' ( in
> >the sense of 'available'.
> 
> It will make them unusable in the sense that they won't be visible as
> an ext3 filesystem so they will be available for the installer to use.
> 
> BTW, is this a general fault with Debian? If so, it seems odd that such
> a nasty bug hasn't been fixed yet. Every other installer I've seen has
> had the ability to force overwriting of data on a partition for over 10
> years...
> 
> Tet

   Perhaps it is not too obvious, but if you are trying to use the new
Debian installer, you have to move the cursor to every line that you wish to
change and press return. If you wish to use a partition that is listed as
"do not use this partition" then move the cursor there. If there is more
than one other possible answer you will be shown a new screen, otherwise it
will just toggle. If you wish to delete a partition move the cursor to that
line. Changing the number of partitions may renumber some partitions. There
is no need to remove data first. You may need to scroll down to select the
next step.
   Another probably more useful, although painfully slow, way of removing
data is to "mke2fs -c -c" which will do a badblocks test on a partition,
writing different patterns to the whole disc surface. This has the advantage
of possibly clearing sectors corrupted by a power failure during write, etc.

-- 
Chris Bell

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