Partition Hell

I have a computer that was a Win2K box for several years. Last week it stopped booting because of some corruption on the hard drive. I tried to repair that and just made it worse, essentially hosing the partition table on the hard drive. I decided to just wipe the HD and install Debian Linux on that box. However, when I go through the part of the setup where I create the partition tables, it thinks there is 2114 MB available. Really, the HD has 10 times that amount. My question that I throw open to the web is this: is there a tool that will let me wipe this down to the bare metal and reclaim everything? I have the newest Knoppix to which I can boot, or whatever I can do from the Debian install disks. How does one start over with a hard drive in a funky state like this one?

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.