Quick way to remove partitions

[TechSupp]

Got to image some Samsung Netbooks which is not a problem, however they come with three partitions on the drive and we want them as a single partition. Whats the quickest way to clear the drive and create a new partition of the whole disk. Can do it at the moment but its a convoluted way and with a few to do looking to cut down the time. When I get more time I will be looking into setting up a Fog server!

[powdarrmonkey]

Boot a Knoppix CD and use the partition doobery, or if you don't have CD drives follow these tiny steps to get it on a USB disk instead.

[TechSupp]

Tried doing it using the Gparted tool on the Linux Rescuecd (also includes Partimage which I am using to clone the partitions) but can't seem to get it to work correctly. Seems to fail but them again just had an idea why! I left the final partition and just resized it, probably have been better deleting it and creating a new one so that it starts from scratch as if I just imaged on to the resized one it left bits somewhere that were part of the initial install. Funny how things make more sense when you write it down!

Thanks

[powdarrmonkey]

Just nuke all of them and let Windows add a bigun.

[Michael]

Got to image some Samsung Netbooks which is not a problem, however they come with three partitions on the drive and we want them as a single partition. Whats the quickest way to clear the drive and create a new partition of the whole disk. Can do it at the moment but its a convoluted way and with a few to do looking to cut down the time. When I get more time I will be looking into setting up a Fog server!

 

You could kill two birds with one stone here - extract the hard drive, install as a slave drive in another system and either use a third party utility like Partition Magic or of course Windows's own Disk Management. You can then image the drive, re-install it in the netbook and then join it to the domain using an automated Sysprep.

[mattx]

I would use Gdisk and make a .gg answer / Batch file. [ To delete the partitions ]

 

GDisk Commands

Edited June 9, 2009 by mattx

[TechSupp]

Thanks for the replys, as these are netbooks swapping drives and adding as slaves not the easiest but anyway, sorted it out. It was my inexperience of Gparted and imaging in the end. Just used Gparted on the RescueCD, deleted everything, created new one, formatted, marked as boot, then used Partimage to image the partition from an image on a USB drive and hey presto, one copied laptop. Still must look into settinmg up a FOG server though. Did try it using PING but it suggested it was going to take 3hrs to just create the image so just decided to Partimage the drives on to/from a USB HD..22mins! Would FOG be any quicker (19.5Gb of data) and why?

 

Hey ho...6 done only 14 to go!