zero out harddrive without getting rid of ubuntu?

[liltmac100]

Hey guys,

So I recently downloaded ubuntu onto my machine. Upon installation, it never prompted me if I wanted to partition it, it just went ahead and installed on my C drive which is also my windows 7 drive. My plan was to zero out my C drive (more specificially my windows 7 drive) and leave ubuntu running as my primary operating system.

Does anybody know how I can go about zeroing out my harddrive without also getting rid of ubuntu? Any help would be great. Thanks!

[nujinini]

Hello and welcome liltmac100

...I recently downloaded ubuntu onto my machine. Upon installation, it never prompted me if I wanted to partition it, it just went ahead and installed on my C drive which is also my windows 7 drive...

Maybe you did not notice but AFAIK, it always give you the choices where you want to install it.

My plan was to zero out my C drive (more specificially my windows 7 drive) and leave ubuntu running as my primary operating system.

You mean your windows was not over written?

Does anybody know how I can go about zeroing out my harddrive without also getting rid of ubuntu? Any help would be great.

Kindly post the outputs of

$ sudo fdisk -l
$ df -h

-l is a small L

[liltmac100]

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf8000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 6 48163+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 7 1312 10485760 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 1312 9469 65517568 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 9469 9730 2097152 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 9469 9730 2096128 dd Unknown
chris@ubuntu:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0 17G 3.5G 12G 23% /
none 491M 256K 491M 1% /dev
none 497M 1.3M 495M 1% /dev/shm
none 497M 92K 497M 1% /var/run
none 497M 0 497M 0% /var/lock
/dev/sda3 63G 45G 18G 72% /host

[Jonathan183]

Looks like you have a wubi install ... you can migrate this to a full install but my advice is backup data and do a fresh install - booting from the live CD rather than starting Windows (make sure you have BIOS set to boot from CD before the hard drive).

[liltmac100]

cool cool, so which drive would you reccommend zeroing out? All of them?

[Jonathan183]

After you backup data you can do what you want or keep what you want. You can just select use the whole drive during the fresh install if that's what you want.
If PC is still under warranty I suggest you retain Windows 7 for the moment ... vendors are keen to say they cant support if Windows is not installed

[nujinini]

...If PC is still under warranty I suggest you retain Windows 7 for the moment ... vendors are keen to say they cant support if Windows is not installed

I agree indeed