Offbreed wrote in message
...
North wrote:

In these cases do the fdisk twice (fdisk then reformat then fdisk again
then
reformat then reinstall the OS).

I use "autoclave", which is no longer offered. The people who wrote and
supported it now recommend Darik's Boot and Nuke:

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

I have not tried that.

With Autoclave, I just boot to floppy and kick back, usually using a
single write with 0, rather than multiple over writes. Then go through
the normal format and install process.

No fuss, and no left over code contaminating whatever is installed.

LOL, I remember the old days, before hard drives. I had an IBM PC with two
floppy drives, no internal HD. When ever I had a bad floppy, I would break
out a BIG magnet and erase the disk with that...lol Of course the disk would
be totally useless afterwards but at least no one could read the data that
was on the disk to begin with.

I'm going to buy a new desktop that is designed for linux, although the
linux OS's that I've played with suck IMO.

n.