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#1 2020-11-23 22:56:18

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Hello, New arch linux user and new user to the forums.

Clarification: I'm having 3.4 gb of ram being shown on installation. Even after using Gparted and DD. After my latest installed OS with encryption enabled I had 3.6 on clean install. I started with 4.

I need to completely erase the hard drive to install Linux to remove previous encryption of other operating systems. I have 0.6 gb less ram available to me before I started distro hopping like changing underwear 6 months ago. the previous installation are still listed on the uefi. So I assume when I was formatting the drive with dd and GParted it wasn't erasing the encryption. So when I boot into Linux it is still locked down to previous os's I'm assuming.

Edit: I know some core utilities aren't being erased because  I keep getting a dummy output when the screen saver kicks in on multiple debian and ubuntu based distro's. I'm fed up with ubuntu and debian based systems. I really enjoyed manjaro 6 months ago but I want to step my game up.

Would using something like Darik's Boot and Nuke fix the issue? I'm using a HDD not an SSD.

Last edited by Mrhawkbox (2020-11-24 00:29:45)

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#2 2020-11-23 23:09:35

Scimmia
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Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 11,463

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Formatting the drive does the job. What you're seeing with UEFI is the nvram entries stored on the motherboard, not on the drive. See efibootmgr.

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#3 2020-11-23 23:20:49

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Scimmia wrote:

Formatting the drive does the job. What you're seeing with UEFI is the nvram entries stored on the motherboard, not on the drive. See efibootmgr.

Sorry but could you clarify when you say formatting does the job do you mean dd or gparted?

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#4 2020-11-23 23:33:40

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Scimmia wrote:

Formatting the drive does the job. What you're seeing with UEFI is the nvram entries stored on the motherboard, not on the drive. See efibootmgr.

Yes but I'm having ram being locked down allocated to something because I have 0.6 less ram available compared to when when I first started distro hopping.  Also I confirmed it wasn't because I wasn't because I was seeing a GB to Gib conversion.

Last edited by Mrhawkbox (2020-11-23 23:34:11)

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#5 2020-11-23 23:37:13

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,442
Website

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

And that has absolutely nothing to do with this question.  You do not need to do anything at all to "erase" the drive.  You just partition and format it following the instructions in the wiki.

If you are also facing a different problem / question about your ram, you either need to start a new thread, or revise your title and provide information about that problem which is lacking here.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#6 2020-11-24 00:04:30

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Trilby wrote:

And that has absolutely nothing to do with this question.  You do not need to do anything at all to "erase" the drive.  You just partition and format it following the instructions in the wiki.

If you are also facing a different problem / question about your ram, you either need to start a new thread, or revise your title and provide information about that problem which is lacking here.

I don't mean to sound rude but I didn't intend to be misleading. I want to use arch as my main and only os on this computer. So having 0.6 gb of ram allocated to something else because of something that is still on the hard drive makes partitioning and formatting completely pointless. As I've already formatted the drive using DD and gparted before.  I can be very stupid sometimes so forgive me but is there something I'm not aware of?

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#7 2020-11-24 00:32:02

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

If you formatted the drive,  what you leads you to believe that RAM is still allocated to something on the drive?
RAM can be unavailable for many unrelated reasons.

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#8 2020-11-24 00:40:53

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

loqs wrote:

If you formatted the drive,  what you leads you to believe that RAM is still allocated to something on the drive?
RAM can be unavailable for many unrelated reasons.

Dude I'm sorry I was trying to respond and didn't realize I hit the report button! ANY MODS IGNORE THE REPOORT!

Well mainly because the pulseaudio drivers and alsamixer config keep messing when screensaver boots. It did not happen on manjaro or kali. I installed Pops os and it started happening happened with debian fedora and ubuntu. Used the original flash drive with manjaro happened to that to. Though it could be hardware related but it doesn't explain why I'm having 0.6 GB and for it to decrease 0.2 with each encrypted install. Even with the same manjaro installation.

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#9 2020-11-24 00:46:07

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Boot the Arch installation media,  optionally detach the system disk,  check how much is free.  What tool are you using to check the used and free memory?
Have you got an integrated GPU by any chance as that is a common cause of hundreds of megabytes being unavailable due to being allocated as video RAM by the system's firmware.

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#10 2020-11-24 00:53:48

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

loqs wrote:

Boot the Arch installation media,  optionally detach the system disk,  check how much is free.  What tool are you using to check the used and free memory?
Have you got an integrated GPU by any chance as that is a common cause of hundreds of megabytes being unavailable due to being allocated as video RAM by the system's firmware.

No it's just some crappy nvidia card. I used fdisk and gparted but I just used the check memory function after. also used the ubuntu install gave me same results both things showed the same. Funny enough I did pop out the hard drive but not with the intent to fix anything Just to get the serial number to e-mail the manufacturer. I didn't think much of it the first 2 times but now it's the third time. So I'm confident something is up.

Last edited by Mrhawkbox (2020-11-24 01:00:36)

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#11 2020-11-24 01:00:25

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,442
Website

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Niether fdisk or gparted will tell you anything about RAM.

I'm going to go out on a limb here (not much of a limb at this point, really it's a pretty sound inference): you are not actually talking about RAM are you, you are talking about disk space, right?  These are two completely different things.

If this is about disk space, then don't just say that fdisk and gparted "said the same thing", SHOW US the output you are looking at.

Last edited by Trilby (2020-11-24 01:01:33)


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#12 2020-11-24 01:00:32

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Mrhawkbox wrote:

I used fdisk and gparted. both things showed the same.

You used fdisk and gparted to find out how much free RAM the system had?

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#13 2020-11-24 01:02:05

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Trilby wrote:

Niether fdisk or gparted will tell you anything about RAM.

I'm going to go out on a limb here (not much of a limb at this point, really it's a pretty sound inference): you are not actually talking about RAM are you, you are talking about disk space, right?  These are two completely different things.

No sorry, I horribly misspelled what I did I edited it.

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#14 2020-11-24 01:05:18

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

See the tip box from pastebin you can pipe the commands output directly to the pastebin and post the link from the console of the installation media.
For RAM please post the output of:

free -h
cat /proc/meminfo

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#15 2020-11-24 01:05:29

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

loqs wrote:
Mrhawkbox wrote:

I used fdisk and gparted. both things showed the same.

You used fdisk and gparted to find out how much free RAM the system had?

Hahaha no... sorry what I meant to say is I used memory test on manjaro and an install of ubuntu.

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#16 2020-11-24 01:07:27

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

Are you installing Arch now or Manjaro?  If Arch please post the outputs I requested in post #14 from the Arch installation media.

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#17 2020-11-24 01:29:42

Mrhawkbox
Member
Registered: 2020-11-23
Posts: 63

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

loqs wrote:

Are you installing Arch now or Manjaro?  If Arch please post the outputs I requested in post #14 from the Arch installation media.

Right now arch. checked it with manjaro earlier.  brb I'm going to install it and try the pastebi9n output see what I get.

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#18 2020-11-24 01:36:28

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: I need to completly erase hard drive before installation. Need help.

You do not need to install Arch,  just boot the installation media,  then configure networking if automatic configuration is not correct,  that is all that is required.

Last edited by loqs (2020-11-24 01:36:49)

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