if you simply want to erase the hard drive in order to install Linux,
try one (or both) of the following utilities from IBM:
http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/welcome.htm#Wipe
http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/welcome.htm#Zap
(read the documentation first, of course.)
-brian
On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 08:13:18PM +0200, Hartmann, O. wrote:
> Dear Sirs.
>
> Well, this is a small story about accusing FreeBSD to 'implant'
> a Linux-unreadable filesystem on a Samsung harddrive (ATA100).
>
> I'm the system's operator for a small set of servers running all
> FreeBSD 4.3-STABLE and we are using FreeBSD as our backbone for
> over 5 years now with great success and without any catastrophy,
> except several minor problems, like NFS tricks, but nothing that had not
> been solved withing one or two weeks for ALL FreeBSD users, so far a
> problem has been revealed as a bug.
>
> For our scientists it is necessary to be 'popular' and use the right
> operating system and therefore most of them want Linux, because they
> want it due the fact all others have it also. For this reason we got
> several new fast Intel based computers and two are based on a ABIT
> PC133 mainbord with the HighPoint 370 ATA100/RAID controller. One machine
> has been switched to Windows 2000 because the user needs Windows 2000
> on this machine, but before, I installed FreeBSD 4.3-BETA and 4.3-RC
> for three times with great success and without any problem. Windows
> 2000 won't install itself due several problems with the HighPoint
> controller ... The second machine was the same: three times I installed
> FreeBSD from the ISO image CD without any problem ... The latter machine
> is to be a Linux machine now - but Linux (SuSE 7.0 and SuSE 7.1) won't
> install on the system (ABIT133) and after checking the compatibility
> list of SuSE's homepage we got the information that there are still
> several problems with the HighPoint RAID controller. The main problem
> of the Linux installation procedure was, that Linux recognized several
> uneraseable partitions, marked as "BSD" partition of strange sizes
> (partition / has a size of 1GB in blocks, but I installed a /-partition of
> 256 MB only ...). After using a radical DOS utility to repartition the
> harddisk the Linux loader told us the same and for the first time the
> guy from our computing center told us that this is a problem caused by
> FreeBSD - the evidence was given by the 'fdisk' from Linux showing
> BSD partitions ... huh???
>
> Then we chenaged the mainboard after we read the compatibility list at SuSE's
> homepage. Now this system is equippted with a ASUS CUV4X-D mainboard with
> only one CPU at 1GHz - I run the same board with two 800EB CPUs under
> FreeBSD with a great success (but with a AMI MegaRAID Elite 1600 and a
> Adpaptec 2940UW SCSI subsystem, not ATA).
> The same guy from our computing center came back to reinstall Linux again -
> with no success, because Linux still reports massiv problems in reading
> or being unable to read the partition table of the disk. It seems there
> are still FreeBSD or any BSD typed partition remains.
> Well, I'm not a guru but it seems to me that a 'BSD' type partition is
> common such a way, that each unrecognized or scrambled partition is
> recognized as BSD type ... and Linux seems to have massive problems.
> FreeBSD could be installed without problems - but my chief-professor
> wants Linux, so FreeBSD is out of qualifying ...
>
> Well, I'm a little bit confused about that what happened, but by intuition,
> it seems to be a Linux problem. Does anyone ever heard about partition
> tables created by FreeBSD, caused another system to hang or crash while
> trying to format, repartition or low-level format the harddrive? Linux
> isn't able to repartition the harddrive! And the controller on the ASUS
> CUV4X-D is a VIA chip, not a HighPoint RAID ...
>
> Any ideas? If no, please have an amusement with this ...
>
> --
> MfG
> O. Hartmann
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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