PERFECT: Re: [CLUE-Tech] Clear HDD of old OS, etc?

[Dave Price]

On Fri, May 31, 2002 at 12:01:24PM -0600, Ed Hill wrote:
> > 
> > Can't you just do an 'fdisk /mbr' ?
> 
> 
> Heres a better command which will write all zeros to the first 100
> 512-byte blocks:
> 
>   dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX bs=512 count=100
> 
> In the past, when loading NT 4.0 on to a disk formerly used by Linux, I
> had all sorts of problems.  Even after using "fdisk /mbr" and doing a
> fresh NT 4.0 install, the NT boot loader had problems.  Apparently,
> there was still conflicting junk left in the boot sector of the disk.

That is _exactly_ the issue I am dealing with.  And the zeros at the
sart is _just_right_.  

BTW, the messy-dos FDISK /mbr rights a new messy-dos master boot record, 
destroying lilo and other boot loaders but leaving partition tables and
file systems untouched.

Used to use that one all the time to remove DOS boot sector viruses
quickly - back in the days when boot sector viruses were the vogue,
before we learned about outlook and it's 'mail worm demon spawn'.

aloha,
dave