Erasing second harddrive

[ibower83]

Hello everyone - new Linux user here.

Here is the case:

I have two harddrives installed on my HTPC. I am using the smaller (120gb) to run the OS (kubuntu 10) the larger (1 tb) I want to use to store all of my media.

However....


The second hard drive has THREE linux Distros on it (from me testing and playing and making decisions) and I CANT figure out how to get them off.....

The hard drives are SATA and plugged in in the correct order.

I have tried fdisking and reformating which seemed to work, but when I boot it still asks me which OS i want to boot to.

Right now I am trying to zero out the hard drive by using ths

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

I typed that in as root about 15 minutes ago and hit enter. it hasn't said anything since. no command prompt or anythng. I am hoping it is working, we will see.

Does anyone have any advice? or Open Source utilities that will do what I want for me?

Thanks in advance.

[Irithori]

Your fdisk and format actions did not delete the mbr, so you still got the grub menu.

The dd however has removed the mbr, as you used it on sdb (and not a partition like sdb1)
You can already stop that dd now, repartition with fdisk, and then format that partition.

What the dd is doing right now is to fill the entire disck with zeros.

You can verify that it is doing something by using vmstat, iostat, dstat, etc.
You should see quite high write activity on that disk.

[ibower83]

Hey, thanks for the quick reply!

Directly after i made my first post I rebooted the PC and still got the Grub menu (the one where I have to pick my OS)

So what does that mean for our hero?

Should I do as you suggest and re-format?

is there a way to manually erase the MBR on sdb to ensure that it happens?

thanks - the help is appreciated!!!

[Irithori]

After the dd, the grub menu surely is from sda.
Can you please do the following ans post the result?

fdisk -l

[ibower83]

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 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: 0x00093ead

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13995 112412672 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 13995 14594 4805633 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 13995 14594 4805632 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 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: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table
root@Living-Room:~#

I know that this says that there are no partitions on sdb but when I boot I get a list that has ubuntu partitions that say they are on "sdb1" up to sdb6

[Irithori]

sdb has no partitions anymore.

But the grub in sda's mbr thinks so, because of its config.
Try "update-grub"

[ibower83]

Thank you for your help!

When I booted my computer this time, all of the sdb options were gone.

However it still wants me to pick from the sda options

including

ubuntu generic
ubuntu generic recovery mode
memory test

is there something I can do so that it boots directly into ubuntu without bringing me to this menu?

I REALLY appreciate your help.

Thank you !!!!

[Irithori]

Have a look at
/etc/default/grub
Should be self-explanatory.
You can set the timeout to 0, therefore have the direct boot.
But I would actually advice not to.
Having access to the grub menu is good.

Set it to 2 or 3 seconds timeout,
then do another update-grub

[ibower83]

thanks for your help and the suggestion.

It tells me I dont have permission (As root!) to access the /etc/default/grub

but thats alright. I'll just leave the menu alone as you suggested.
Now off to find out why the HDMI sound doesn't work!!!!

Thanks again for your help!!