I want to erase a HD currently installed with Etch and Squeeze before installing Wheezy (testing). AFAIK either of 2 commands (below) issued by a Knoppix live CD should suffice. But I want to be sure.
From /dev I see:

Or:
If that succeeds, do I have to format the drive before I install Wheezy? Or does formatting and partitioning take care of themselves during the install?

rooster

The installer will allow you to partition and format each partition before installing to those partitions. In fact, it will require you to do so.

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Thanks goumba.

rooster

You don't need to wipe out the surface of HDD in order to install new distro. You need either to remove partitions or delete all files from partition which you're planning to install new distro on. As goumba said, you can repartition whole HDD during the installation of Wheezy. Steps you described in your question are more suitable for preparation of HDD for selling and better to be done with `shred`.

Thanks Alex;
Seems there are several different opinions on the best procedure for a clean install. Perhaps its just perchance, but the threads I've read seem to favour wiping partitions before installing a new distro. Also, the partition I'm setting up for Wheezy is going to be larger than either of those currently installed. I didn't know just how the installer would handle this. Hence, I thought to erase both and start over. I'm only using 80GB total for both Etch and Squeeze on a 160GB Drive. I don't need either anymore for a variety of reasons. Assuming more iterations of Deb are forthcoming, I'm thinking I might as well start fresh with Wheezy and put its descendants in tandem as they get rolled out.

Rephrasing my question: is there anything wrong with either of the 2 options I mentioned in my OP? I don't need to wipe the entire 160GB disk; just the first 80GB containing Etch and Squeeze.

rooster

Hi,

No need to wipe the drive with 'dd'. Just format the partitions with the desired filesystem. Unless you wish to create new partitions with different allocation for each then just create a new filesystem on each existing partition.

As the others said, you don't need to wipe it. I assumed you had some reason for doing so - but you know what happens when one does so .

Just repartition the drive, deleting, creating or resizing partitions as necessary in the installer, and make sure any partitions that you do not change, you still tell the installer to format those partitions (Debian Installer will keep data and not format an existing parition unless you tell it otherwise, IIRC).

There is a difference between wiping partitions and wiping the entire disk. The latter is unnecessary for just installing a new OS and stresses the disk without any benefit. If you want to wipe the partitions (aka zeroing out the partition table) you only need to write zeroes to the first logical block, which contains the partition table:After that the installer will do the partitioning automatically, if you wish so.

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TobiSGD:

Thanks. That is just the answer I was looking for.

Ich bin Ihnen sehr dankbar:

rooster