Splintered Thread from___Drive Failure Imminent_"Last Option"

[Condobloke]

we can still use him....

This will be referred to as bye bye?....or something else?

I made a suggestion...somewhere...yesterday or the day before concerning this lappie.

Remind me about it when whatever you are doing with wiz has finalised. Not Now.

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

Based on what I've been reading, a bad sector can be software related.

I'm too tired now to put my thoughts into anything that might make sense. I'll leave for tomorrow...

I'm going to sleep now!

 

[wizardfromoz]

Stick to your plan - go to sleep, lol

HELPERS -

1. The OP has a 1 TB SATA HDD (Seagate) in a Lenovo IdeaPad S145-15AST we are looking at to see if it can be formatted for use with Linux, it may have one bad sector.
2. She has at her disposal two (2) USB flash drives, one of 64 GB (burned Etcher) and one of 128 GB (burned Rufus), both of which are loaded with Linux Mint 21.2 Live
3. She also has another Lenovo on which she had an operating, installed LM 21.2 which she upgraded in-house to 21.3. It also has Timeshift snapshots stored, but in a folder /Timeshift on the same drive. That drive has warned her of imminent drive failure, via Gnome Disks.

She is currently operating off a Live Mint environment, and of course has to rest all settings on reboot and can't save changes.

My first (priority) goal at the moment is to get her the use of a Persistent Live flash drive. Not easily done with the Etcher-burned one, but I understand it can be done with the Rufus one.

The I'd like to see if we can get the 1 TB drive formatted for Linux.

Following that, success, I hope, I see options

• Install LM 21.2 to the Lenovo that needs formatting and once completed she can update that to 21.3 OR
• Once a USB flash drive is made with LM 21.2 on it with Persistence, it could also have an extra EXT 4 Partition placed on it, of a size of say 20 GB
• Then she could insert that into the other Lenovo and boot it, take a Timeshift snapshot of her LM 21.3 and have it stored on the USB flash drive
• She could then restore that snapshot to the newly formatted Lenovo - Timeshift will generate both the ESP and the root partition.

TIA

Wiz

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

IF the bad sector is the result of software,

...why not just wipe the drive completely? I have software to do a DOD wipe. Then format the entire thing.

 

[wizardfromoz]

By all means

 

[Condobloke]

I cannot help you with persistence .....another body will no doubt take care of that.


So, when you are up and at it again, you will be wiping the 1TB drive in the Lenovo IdeaPad S145-15AST......YES?

And then you will go about formatting it?......format it to ext4

Let me know when that has happened. ....or....if that has happened without mishap, use your usb stick to boot to LM21.2.

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

ISo, when you are up and at it again, you will be wiping the 1TB drive in the Lenovo IdeaPad S145-15AST......YES?

Yes...
I'm going to move the good drive to the 1st laptop. That one has much better components, but more importantly a cd/dvd drive. Then wipe it.

IF ANYONE TELLS ME TO UNPLUG ANYTHING OR MAKE SURE I TAKE OUT THE BATTERY I WILL BE IN AUSTRALIA IN LESS THAN 5 MINUTES TO KICK SOME BUTTS

And then you will go about formatting it?......format it to ext4

It's been a while since I wiped a drive. I always formatted for Windows. I need to make sure I can format it to ext4 with the software I have . It's open-source so I probably can. If not, I need to make to make sure I have a way before wiping it.

A DOD wipe takes a LONG TIME. The last one I did was on a 500 GB drive. 1 TB is twice as many passes.


And I thought a learning a new OS would be the challenge...

 

[wizardfromoz]

I need to make sure I can format it to ext4 with the software I have . It's open-source so I probably can. If not, I need to make to make sure I have a way before wiping it.

No need.

If the LM 21.2 Live can see the drive, whether it be through Disks, Gparted or Terminal, the drive can be formatted to EXT 4, or that can be done with the Installer.

Morning (slurp)

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

I don't think that right now I can handle any more frustration.

I don't think I'm capable of answering any questions, directions or anything.

Yes, I ran into some issues. I wanted to do a test run of DBAN on the other laptop before trying to do anything on this one. I've been looking at a lot of articles on internet. I don't see the options they refer to. I think I don't know the best search terms to use to find what I'm looking for. Right now I'm more capable of dealing with a classroom of 30 screaming kids walking around on desks and trashing the room right now.
,

 

[wizardfromoz]

I WILL BE IN AUSTRALIA IN LESS THAN 5 MINUTES TO KICK SOME BUTTS

Now I get the cats. They are a witch's Familiars? Lol.

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

Maybe other people have heard of this...

When get intensely frustrated, electronic devices have been effected in the past. I've touched broken light bulbs and they worked again.

Thank god I can sign into my Firefox account every time I boot into live Linux.

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

And now that I am calmer, my wireless mouse if working again............

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

 

[wizardfromoz]

https://www.linux.org/threads/food-favs.43406/

?

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

Okay, I'm making progress, on part 1

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

Part one of wiping the hard drive question.
It seems to me that this part would be better in new thread. I'm pretty sure the circumstance are unusual and might be helpful.

Etcher download when running live Linux mint

 

[wizardfromoz]

I can't help but feel that you are making more work for yourself than you need to, reinventing the wheel so to speak.

But I will boot to another distro where I can run some tests, and I will login to here, there.

Sing out if you reach a point where you are about to engage the disk-wiping process.

Cheers

Wiz

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

I can't help but feel that you are making more work for yourself than you need to, reinventing the wheel so to speak.

I'll explain what I'm doing...

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

@wizardfromoz

As I said earlier, I wanted to do a test run with the other laptop. I ran into a lot of problems trying to do that. I have a copy of DBan I used a long time ago on a CD. I've used it many times.
However, the other laptop won't boot from the CD/DVR drive. It doesn't show in the boot menu, with or without DBan in it.

So I tried to use a flash drive. None of the programs I tried to use recognized the USB when I tried to format it, GParted was one of them.

I went round and round trying to figure out why and what to do. Then my wireless stopped working. I had cords all over the place because I was going back forth between laptops. Every time I did, I had to stand up and sit back down several times.

I really want to wipe the drive. To do it, I'm going to have to do so on Last Option, but Last Option doesn't have a CD drive, at all. So I can't use my copy of DBAN on a CD.

On Last Option Gparted, Disk Utility and Disks all recognize the USB stick. I reformatted as Fat 32 so I could burn DBan to a the flash drive so I can wipe the disk. I'm not going to bother with a DOD wipe or moving the HDD. I can do it later if it comes to it.

While I'm at it, I'm also going to burn LM 21.3 to a flash drive.

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

@wizardfromoz

Never mind about LM 21.3
The down load will take entirely too long. I want to get moving on this