I am making the full switch to Ubuntu!
In order to do so I want to wipe my hard drive entirely to remove all of the viruses and what not and then do a clean install of Ubuntu.
However, I am not sure how to wipe my hard drive safely and properly.
Thanks!
Its better to remove your windows viruses before wiping your harddisk...
As you may know ,Guttman says that you need to wipe your harddisk 25 times write to zero to ensure that your harddisk is clean...
Anyway, It is possible to scan your windows partition..
Download and install Avast! Linux Home Edition.
Launch Avast and update its Database.
Now mount your Windows Partition.
Click on Selected folders and browse to your partition.
After you remove the viruses... Now you can install Ubuntu cleanly
Note that: Even you keep viruses it will never affect your ubuntu(linux) but i just mention the antivirus just to clean your hdd.
Don't use wubi to install Ubuntu.
I hope you already have a ISO file ?
Open it using powerIso.
In the poweriso tools , choose option "make bootable USB".
This will your USB a bootable USB.
During Restart you will prompted to Install ubuntu.
Choose an option to remove existing ubuntu and windows and Install the New Ubuntu
You don't have to perform any special cleaning to clean you hard drive from viruses. If you are in doubt that your partition table is in a healthy state, then you can create a new partition table. Simply speaking the partition table defines where current filesystems lie. A filesystem in turn is a protocol for communicating with the harddrive's storage units (called blocks).
By default every newly created filesystem will assume the space it gets assinged to be empty and will overwrite these blocks, not careing about previously existing data or what protocol/filesystem was used previously.
So creating new filesystems that overwrite old data is enough to deal with malware on your harddrive.
Dont install any Windows compatibility software in Linux, if you want to be safe from Windows malware on Linux.
