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Showing posts from January, 2021

Guide: using the linux liveCD/USB command line to wipe the beginning of a disk / partition

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So you have this shiny new drive, but when you put it into your Windows PC and fire it up it seems that Windows doesn't want to work with it; it just displays it as a 'RAW' partition, regardless of what you do to try and correct the problem.  You've checked cables, you've re-seated the card (in the case of NVMe's), and you're about to pull it out to send it back for a replacement (or worse, write it up as a loss). Before that, however, there is one last option... OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:  the method I'm about to describe here is as barebones as it gets.  What we're about to use is an old command line program that does absolutely no hand holding or warnings whatsoever.  If you type the final command line wrong the chances of you losing data just jumped to almost 100% (unless it just kicks back an error, in which case consider yourself lucky)!  That being said, figuring out the correct command line isn't difficult, and this works with just about any ...