using tar

Greetings. I am trying to clean data off a dead windows install using Damn Small Linux (Knoppix variant) off a thumb drive.
Since all else has failed that I tried, I am trying to tar anything off the drive, but when I do the tar --create oldfiles.tar . it dumps ascii.
It is mounted as rw, and is ntfs.


Any ideas for another noob?


Thanks


Jason

What do you want to perform U want to clean your windows partition?

I want to tar some files together so I can transfer them off the machine easily.


Thank You


Jason

So You want tO wipe Off all the data in the USB that's it......

Mount your USB under a mountpoint of your choice

Code:

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mount /dev/sda /mnt/

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then execute the following command

Code:

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rm -rf /mnt/

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I'm pretty sure DSL doesn't have write access to ntfs partitions, so that could be your problem. It might be easier to do this from an Ubuntu live CD or something else that has ntfs write enabled.

Otherwise try something like:

Code:

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tar -cf /home/dsl/oldfiles.tar .

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which will create a tarball of the contents of the current directory in /home/dsl/

I think Darkrose might have hit it. I will try an Ubuntu flavor when I can.

If I can specify the path of the new file, I will try writing it to the usb drive. I don't know why I didn't think of this before!


Thanks

Jason