Formatting laptop hardrive

Iristxo

So here's the thing, I have had a Dell laptop for a year and a half, at some stage my brother downloaded a game with a trojan on it and since then laptop has worked really bad. It's really slow, doubles up documents, dvd drive doesn't work properly, whatever. I am running vista. So I am ready to take the plunge, install Ubuntu and to hell with it.

So I purchased an external hard drive with some application named "memeo" and I am now backing everything up into the external hard drive as "guided" by the application. So I am now wondering whether I am doing the right thing backing everything up or should I just back up personal folders like photographs and stuff like that and get rid of everything else.

So once I have backed everything up, what should I do, just format the hard drive? And how do I go about installing Ubuntu?

I am not even sure if this is in the right forum at all. Anybody out there can give me a hand? Thanks in advance.

Alanstrainor

Moved from laptops.

pickarooney

If you haven't got rid of the Trojan, backing everything up might not bne the best of ideas. Then again, if you are going to go with Ubuntu the Trojan itself won't have any effect on your system.

You could download wubi and install it from within Windows. Piece of cake to create a dual boot and, if you want later, remove Windozs entirely.

Iristxo

Thanks for that. What I really want to do though, is wipe the thing clean and start from the beginning. How do I go about that? Do I format the hard disk and then re-boot with the windows re-booting disc or something?

larryone

If you want to keep the windows and set up a dual boot system you will be better off installing windows first, and then ubuntu second. The ubuntu installer will recognise the windows installation and help you with setting up the dual boot. The windows installer wont be so kind. What I would do is:

Back up everything
Clean the disk (www.dban.org is like thick bleach for hard drives. Nothing nasty will survive.)
Install Windows XP because vista is a pile of carp, and XP will run most stuff you need. Unless you need games, which will likely be your biggest need to use windows.
Install Ubtuntu.
Boot Ubuntu and go through the backup, grabbing what you need. The trojan wont infect if you do this on Ubuntu.
Once you have everything, clean the external backup drive. Dban might not be so easy to use here, as if you boot dban, it will destroy every disk it finds. If you are ok with removing the hard drive from your laptop and booting the dban cd, then this will probably be the best way to clean the external drive.

If the ammount of time you'll spend on each OS is about 50/50, then I would give windows more space and keep most of your files there. Much easier for Linux to access files on the Windows side than the other way round. But beware - if one of the files from the backup is infected and you put it in the windows partition there is a chance that there will be problems.

Please note that this is a rather paranoid approach, and use of dban is probably overkill. I just like to make sure =0)

evercloserunion

If the ammount of time you'll spend on each OS is about 50/50, then I would give windows more space and keep most of your files there. Much easier for Linux to access files on the Windows side than the other way round. But beware - if one of the files from the backup is infected and you put it in the windows partition there is a chance that there will be problems.

Well with this in mind, my opinion would be to give Ubuntu more space and keep all your files there. That does mean that if you are working on Windows it will be more difficult to access files stored on Ubuntu. But frankly I think once you start using Ubuntu and get used to it you won't find yourself working on Windows all that much unless you have to. I dual boot Kubuntu and Vista; Kubuntu has the vast majority of my hard drive, and I only keep Vista on it because the likelihood is that eventually I will run into something that does not work on Linux. So I give Vista just enough space to be able to run a few programs and only llog onto it when I need it for a specific purpose.

slowlydownwards

Here's just my two cents ( a lot of overlapping with what other posters said):

- Nevermind that "guided" backup. Copy stuff from your "My Doc" folder (pics, music, vids etc), export your bookmarks, backup the gamesaves and very importantly back up the non-microsoft drivers (ie Driver Magician Lite). Oh yeah, and scribble down your serial numbers http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/ . You forget about all this serial numbes gobledygook when working in linux long enough.

- Restart pc and boot into ubuntu either from cd or usb stick (unetbootin will allow you to create bootable usb from ubuntu .iso image. You can do this from windows).

- At this stage you are running ubuntu from a cd (or usb) and nothing on your hard disk has changed, nor have you installed anything. Now run gparted from within ubuntu (partition editor) and wipe your hard drive. Next thing, create new partition table to your liking. As an example, here's the partition table on my craptop's 80gb hard drive: 20gb ntfs primary partition (for win xp install), 10gb etx3 partition, 3gb linux swap (or whatever the ammount of ram is, only X 2) and the last partiotion is the remainder of empty space, formatted in ext3.

- Click "apply".

-When finished reboot and install windows (onto that emty 20gb ntfs partition). As other posters said, move away from vista. Either go up to win7 (if you have 1gb ram or more) or go down to xp.

- When finished, boot again into ubuntu with cd (or usb) and click on the "Install" icon on the desktop.

- The install process is very simple. The only snag is the partition assignment. Click on the last option, "assign the partitions manually". Click on that 10gb ext3 partition, click "edit" and assign that to be / (from the drop down menu). This is called "root", where the system files are installed. Next click on the very last partition, click "edit" and assign that as /home. This is where your personal files would usually go. However, linux can read and write so well to ntfs and fat32 that you can still store yor files in windows partition if you run out of space. That's it. Click "next" few more times, go start the kettle and when you come back with the cup of tea your linux install will be finished (very fast).

- When you reboot you will be presented with options either to boot into windows or linux... You can change boot order and options later... just google
"edit grub startup menu".

- Now the tricky bit... Even with partial backup, the chances are (99%) that trojans and what-not snuck onto your external drive when you were backing stuff up.

option 1: Install avira onto your linux system and scan/clean your external hard drive from there.
option 2: Arm up your new windows installtion with antivirus (maybe avira again), malwarebytes, spybot + whatever works these days... update all of these
programes, plug in your external hard drive, and scan it with each of them.

Maybe other posters would have better idea how to 100% clean your files on that external hd.

One last (optional) thing. Linux Mint is a prety-fied version of ubuntu. Does everuthing that ubuntu does only with a lot more eyecandy out of the box. May give that a try instead of ubuntu.

Good luck.