Zombie partitions

Question

This issue has evolved. ^{IT'S ALIVEEEEEEEEEE!!!}

After giving the disk a brand-new partition table (or that's what gparted would have me think it's done), this is what gparted shows:

How great! Magical partitions and magical data that I killed a week ago have come back from the dead!

Fine, maybe gnome-disks can help the problem.

Evidently, udisks and gparted are conspiring to make me smash my head on a brick!

Well, no matter, perhaps it will comply if I format it using gnome-disks... never mind.

Then I tried formatting it with gparted again and it seemed to comply! However, as soon as Ubiquity tried to format it / run partman on it for an Ubuntu installation, Ubiquity crashed as it has before, at this screen:

What do I do? Is there a magical tool which will soothe my Ubuntu installation woes, or need I buy a new disk? I really don't want to buy a new disk. _{I'm poor, okay??}

I'm not tempted to believe I need a new disk, i.e. that this one is physically damaged because it's a few-months old SSD. It never leaves the compartment on my laptop, so I don't see how encrypting it equates to physical damage, but whatever.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 29 '15 at 23:46

1

I am just going to throw this out there, but maybe you can try clearing the memory cells if you don't want any of the data on that drive.

Here is a great step-by-step for memory cell clearing on a SSD drive.

answered Dec 29 '15 at 23:46

Terrance

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This looks promising, thank you! If it works, and I can install, I'll accept this answer :) – cat Dec 29 '15 at 23:48
@cat Sounds good to me. =) – Terrance Dec 29 '15 at 23:48
Now I have another problem. Got any advice? – cat Dec 30 '15 at 00:20
@cat Try setting the security password to something other than NUL or NULL. Try PaSsWoRd. It's not going to matter, as the password gets reset after the erase is completed. – Terrance Dec 30 '15 at 00:30
I tried PaSsWoRd, password, and the BIOS's password, all of which gave Input/Output Error – cat Dec 30 '15 at 00:41
@cat Your line should read like this hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass PasSWorD /dev/sdX Where did you get the --user-master m from? – Terrance Dec 30 '15 at 01:00
I tried --user-master u before but I used --user-master m in the post because the BIOS has a master password set for the drive. --user-master u gives the same Input/Output Error. – cat Dec 30 '15 at 01:07
@cat Have you tried disabling your bios boot password? – Terrance Dec 30 '15 at 03:19
No, but I will now. – cat Dec 30 '15 at 03:27
@cat I am very happy that you got it working! =) Have an awesome day! – Terrance Jan 02 '16 at 22:12

Zombie partitions

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