Shouldn't there be some sort of notice explaining to the user that rather then this just being a "very good idea", that it also might result in a loss of data? " Before creating your partitions, it is a very good idea to initialize the beginning of your HD using dd. Doing this will ensure that you have no issues with mounting previously fat32 partitions, like /boot for example. To do this you would do: Code listing 6.1: Initializing first 1024 Sectors of HD # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdaBOOT bs=1024 count=1024 BOOT is the partition that holds your /boot. "
some people do not have '/boot' please take it into count. J.
fixed in the CVS: # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdxy bs=1K count=1 Replace /dev/hdxy with the device you wish to "clean." Warning: The command above will destroy all data from /dev/hdxy. Be careful and check twice which partition you specify for zeroing. If you make a mistake it might result in a loss of data.
