Re: Installing Jessie on a computer that current has Windows 7 on it
Quoting Paul E Condon (pecondon@mesanetworks.net):
> On 20150310_1410+0000, Dan Purgert wrote:
> > On Mon, 09 Mar 2015 22:07:17 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> >
> > > I have NO interest in dual boot. I simply want to wipe the disk and
> > > install Jessie. I have last weeks weekly build of
> > > debian-testing-i3k6-xfce-CD-1.iso.
> > > I starts nicely like I have seen many times before, but when I get to
> > > partitoning the HD there is trouble. It won't overwrite the NTFS
> > > partitions that contain Windows 7. I think I have read about this and
> > > there is some special trick, but I can't find it. Please, someone. Help.
> > > Point me to the directions.
> When I got this refurbed Dell Optiplex GX620, it came with Windows 7
> already installed from a reseller on the web.
Snap, almost.
I have a couple of GX520s, and one of them has the problem that I
coincidently just mentioned in my grub posting. Both have W7 drives
but 80GB is hardly useful so I let them be and put a 500GB PATA drive
in each.
On one of them, if you leave the SATA interface on and boot linux, it
produces lots of errors, and each has to timeout, so that's why I
switch it off. While doing this in the BIOS (before I realised it was
easier to do it in the kernel) I noticed that it said the SATA drive
was "frozen". I wrote in my inventory file a long while ago that W7
appeared to set this flag on controlled shutdown, and a power reset
clears it.
I didn't take this issue any further as I wasn't requiring the disk.
Searching gx620 frozen disk seems to throw up Dell engineers
talking about how to get things working in 'doze but no general
solution that I've ever seen.
There's also talk of setting "SATA Operation" to other than Normal in
the BIOS but, again, I didn't bother. Because the faulty-SATA box is
my main linux server, I don't feel like mucking it up, and there's no
guarantee that the other box, which I have tried out the W7 on, would
behave in just the same manner.
man hdparm talks about --dco-freeze but obviously I've never gone
there, and you do so at your own risk!
One approach, again at youor own risk, would be to try to wipe the
drive in a different box, perhaps a non-Dell. If that didn't work, I
guess there's little to stop you taking more brutal actions with
hdparm. OTOH a phone call or posting to Dell might be in order.
Good luck...and let us know any outcome...
Cheers,
David.
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