i need help to find ANOTHER way to format my hdd and reinstall Ubuntu

[myrnamynkoff]

Hi everyone!

I have an Acer netbook computer, and about a year ago a friend installed Ubuntu on it, I loved it ever since.. but something happened last week and right now I can´t boot to the hdd.

So i created a USB live image, managed to back up all my data, and now i would like to format everything and reinstall Ubuntu from scratch. I only have one hard disk, and for some reason my computer is having a lot of trouble recognizing it. I tried reinstalling Ubuntu from the USB disk, but it will just froze right after the first options screen and nothing else happens after that.

I believe that evil Windows might be somewhere on that disk still and preventing me from accessing it. or maybe it's a physical problem? the original problem last week seemed to be right after i installed some updates.

can anyone help me? I miss my computer very very much

thank you my friends

[philinux]

use the live usb and look in system admin disc utility. Check the HD is ok.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

Use the disk utility and check it for errors
it is under system->Administration (may be preferences)
edit was beaten to the punch by philinux

[myrnamynkoff]

ok! i don't know if this helps or not but i forgot to say that I used to have Ubuntu 10.04 and now I'm loading Ubuntu 10.10 on the usb live image.......



soooo.... when I try to find the disk it's not there, BUT if i plug my external hdd it's like in order to load it, it opens an option that i can't see before that is 'File Manager', and that's how i got to my hdd the first time in order to remove my data from it. So now that you know that, yes, I went to Disk Utility, and when I click on Check Filesystem i get the message that you can read on the screenshot...

maybe i can try formatting the disk from disk utility? i haven/t tried that yet...

[hansolo4949]

Okay, first things first, do you care about wiping everything out in the drive? If so, just run an error check then format it. That will give you a nice clean slate to put your stuff on. If you still have stuff on there, run the error check. Can you access the drive? What happens when you try to boot?

[myrnamynkoff]

if i try to simply boot from the hdd it won´t boot at all.

i did the Check Filesystem option on the 288GB and it says it's clean. I already did my backup so I'll format it right away... let's see....

[myrnamynkoff]

ok... wait..... i've never formatted a disk from ubuntu before.... which format should i give to it? Ext4? and if I want it to clean everything I should un-click the option that says 'encrypt underlying device' and leave the option that says 'take ownership of filesystem' clicked right?

also, i just found a green dot under Drive- ATA- that says 'Disk has a few bad sectors'

[searchfgold6789]

Why not just start the Ubuntu installer, and select the option that lets you erase the disk automatically and use the entire thing for the installation?
Otherwise, yes, try using the disk utility - make sure that the disk is "Unmounted" first otherwise the option won't appear to erase it. Make sure you have a Swap partition (about 1GB is fine) as well as an ext4 partition.

[myrnamynkoff]

because when i tried to simply install ubuntu, it will froze right after the first options screen. it wouldn't even let me see the options to erase the disk. OK i will try to format it under Ext4 format then....ok?

i'm scared! :S

[searchfgold6789]

It'll be fine. Just don't forget the Swap partition I told you about