DO NOT rely on DISK UTILITY'S 'erase'

[quietthomas]

Sorry if this is a revelation to me alone, but after days of trying various distros on a couple of Dell computers I've come to realise something:

 

The 'erase' option in Disk Utility of every distro I've got, DOESN'T ALWAYS do a full job.

Before I found this out, I found my installations and trialling of different install options, very inconsistent (due to whatever 'erase' is leaving behind). However, I've been using erase on partitions alone, and not on whole hard drives, so am not sure whether the problem is confined to partitions or what.

 

So if you've been trying different combinations and meeting inconsistent results, or if someone's got the same machine, and you can't work out why their instructions aren't working on your hardware - make sure to format by some other method FIRST.

 

Shifting format to something non Mac OS, then back again might work as a more thorough erase, as might messing with partitions - but I've not had time to test those possibilities.

 

Anyways, it's a simple thing (which I wish I'd known 5 days ago), and I suspect it's the cause of lots of the complaints about inconsistent installation results. SO I JUST THOUGHT I'D SHARE!!

 

P.S This is my first post here, so go easy on me.

[jengyeh]

I seem to have the same problem, I can understand exactly what you mean. I will try using windows to format.

[Hagar]

This is an ancient & well-known issue, which is probably why it has been lost/forgotten/buried. Regardless is not a reason to cross-post all over the forum.

 

The old-school solution is the "double-format": erase to fat32 in disk util first, and then back to hfs+ , that does the trick.