Can't delete HDD partitions!

Lum

Wiping that drive from ubuntu should be a case of opening up a terminal and running

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M

Assuming that sda, the 250GB drive, is the one to get rid of.

You should only really need to wipe the start, but this one has already gotten weird so nuclear option it is.

Naf

fwor wrote: »

I vaguely remember seeing something like this several years ago when trying to re-use a HDD that had (unknown to me) previously been part of a RAID array.

I wonder if it's possible that the RAID and/or LVM flags are set for one or more of the partitions, and so the filesystem handler can't/won't complete any filesystem transactions (i.e. they will appear to work but won't be marked as complete).

In theory you can see and set these flags in GPARTED under Partition, Manage Flags, though I don't recall being able to fix the problem that way.

The only way I found to solve the problem at the time was to write a new MBR/partition table using the HDD manufacturer's utilities.

No active flags other than 'boot' according to GParted.

Naf

S0litaire wrote: »

How big is the drive?
and how long did DBAN run for?

try this..

boot from Linux Live CD/usb stick (this is assuming it's debian based)
run gparted
you should partition listed /dev/sda1 (recovery?) /dev/sda2 (os) etc...
get the drive location (i.e. /dev/sda) make a note of it.
open terminal window
run "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd#/" (replace /dev/sd# with what you noted down earlier and type it in without the quote marks!)
go away and make tea and cakes (from scratch! this might take a while!!) ^_~

"dd" is a program that access the disk at bit level and the command given overwrites the entire disk with zeros.
wiping out everything from the boot sectors, partition information and any data.

It's basically what DBAN should do but for some reason it's not working...

Lum wrote: »

Wiping that drive from ubuntu should be a case of opening up a terminal and running

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M

Assuming that sda, the 250GB drive, is the one to get rid of.

You should only really need to wipe the start, but this one has already gotten weird so nuclear option it is.

So I've got this running now. I'm a little concerned that if this works & manages to wipe the disk; I still won't be able to write to it again if its a hardware error...

Naf

Hasn't worked either.

Naf

So my possible interpretation:
Drive is somehow read only (or maybe write heads are completely ruined); but OS can't tell
OS writes to the disk, which is placed into the buffer - OS can still read & use this data pending it being written to the disk
But the data never gets written, just erased from the buffer & disappears.
BSOD is caused when the amount of data written to the buffer exceeds the buffer size faster than the buffer is emptied.

Seem reasonable?

fwor

Do you have access to the drive manufacturer's diagnostic disk? They can generally be downloaded for free.

That should give you a definitive view on its health, and should also provide the tools to re-scan the surface for bad sectors (which will then no longer be used) - sometimes described as a "low level format". IMO this is a better way to achieve a complete wipe than any "generic" tool such as DBAN.

It should also let you write a completely new, clean MBR.