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So this issue goes beyond simply formatting it and I’ve tinkered and made it worse. I’ll try to be somewhat brief. In the end, I’m hoping there is software that can maybe be a one-click solution.

I retired a laptop and that laptop has a way bigger SSD than the one in my new laptop. The old laptop was partitioned in a way to dual boot either windows or Linux Mint. Let’s say the SSD has 1TB of space. I allocated 200GB to Linux and the rest was to windows. Then there’s a factory partition for recovery.

Well, I thought I could just do a quick format on it then begin the process of cloning my smaller SSD currently in the laptop I want to use and all would be good. Wrong.

Now the fucking thing doesn’t let me do anythinge research with it.

I spent time in forums and YouTube researching. I think maybe the Linux partition and the booting options may have been my issue but this was the only computer I’ve ever had set up like that so I was ignorant to the problems I could create.

What kind of solution would just bring this SSD back to being empty and able to accept my clone like the day it was purchased?

So this issue goes beyond simply formatting it and I’ve tinkered and made it worse. I’ll try to be somewhat brief. In the end, I’m hoping there is software that can maybe be a one-click solution. I retired a laptop and that laptop has a way bigger SSD than the one in my new laptop. The old laptop was partitioned in a way to dual boot either windows or Linux Mint. Let’s say the SSD has 1TB of space. I allocated 200GB to Linux and the rest was to windows. Then there’s a factory partition for recovery. Well, I thought I could just do a quick format on it then begin the process of cloning my smaller SSD currently in the laptop I want to use and all would be good. Wrong. Now the fucking thing doesn’t let me do anythinge research with it. I spent time in forums and YouTube researching. I think maybe the Linux partition and the booting options may have been my issue but this was the only computer I’ve ever had set up like that so I was ignorant to the problems I could create. What kind of solution would just bring this SSD back to being empty and able to accept my clone like the day it was purchased?

(post is archived)

[–] • 3 pts

Use a Linux Live DVD edition, run gparted, delete all partitions and then format the SSD with what ever file system you want (ext4, etc).

[–] • 0 pt

If he already has a Linux Mint stick; it has gparted baked in.

[–] • 0 pt

Gparted has saved my bacon countless times.

[–] • 1 pt

On the topic of rescue software, I like things that boot quickly and are small. is an up-to-date live CD image under 500MB that boots to a command-line (protip: setfont -d to make font double size on small 4k monitors). I keep it installed on my drives and USB (with Ventoy) for quick booting where I can fix common problems (borked fstab, imaging between drives, doing a partclone image of my root partition).

[–] • 2 pts (edited )

As this is an SSD, you **don't ** want to do something like "dd if=/dev/zeo of=/dev/sda", and just leave it like that. This is due to the nature of an SSD having knowledge of which blocks are allocated. In essence it will think that the whole drive is allocated with useful information, when in fact it's all just zero's intended to wipe the drive. What this causes is a performance degradation when performing partial block writes because the SSD will first need to perform a read and then a write. when it should just be performing a write.

What you want to do is basically unallocate all of the blocks at the SSD firmware level by essentially performing a TRIM command across the whole disk.

if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1024k count=256; sync;blkdiscard /dev/sdX this command will basically wipe out the partition table, force the kernel to execute(if it didn't already), and then force unallocate everything within the SSD's firmware.

(This doesn't securely wipe the device, but it will make it seem as if it's a new unwritten drive to the operating system)

[–] • 0 pt

And can this command be entered in Windows? Because I no longer have any Linux installations?

[–] • 1 pt

Always good to keep a Linux live CD on a USB stick. Ventoy is a nice multi-boot installer that lets you just copy iso files over to the USB and then boot from them (windows installer iso can also be booted from).

[–] • 0 pt

A will reset everything, including the flash translation layer (FTL). It adds one wear level count but you're sure to not carry any performance baggage from previous use.

Trimming the entire drive with blkdiscard should in theory be just as good but if I'm starting fresh I do the extra step.

[–] • 0 pt

Sounds like the result I want. Thank you!

[–] • 0 pt

can anyone really do anything on windows? I've been using windows for work since the past 4-5 months and it's complete hot garbage. Just recently I've been trying to get it to report proper memory usage and it simply won't. I'm running a program that says it's using 12gb then when I look in the task manager it says it's using 1.6gb. When I look at the total memory usage it says it 24 gb but when I add up all the processes it's 3gb. It blocks off the memory usage into 4 groups: processes, "system librarys etc", "mem that needs written to disc before it can be used (even if you have swap turned off", and free. So block 2 that uses like 30% of 32gb you're just not allowed to know what the fuck is going there. Block 3 just I guess is dead memory if you have swap turned off. The third is like 8gb on a 32gb machine with supposedly 3gb of processes running.

On a 32gb machine if I turn off swap and memory compression, while only the browser is running there is only like a 50% chance the whole machine won't crash before I turn it on in the morning. What in the living f?

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

No, these are Linux commands. You could boot from a Linux live cd or thumb drive though. You also need to locate the disk drive logical location. The whole “/dev/sdX” part would be replaced with the address for the drive you want to erase. (I would physically disconnect any other drives before doing this to make sure you don’t erase the wrong drive)

Have to do something like “fdisk —list “first to get the addresses for your drives.

[–] • 0 pt

Ok I’ll study up and see what happens.

[–] • 1 pt

You have to delete the partition(s) with something like gparted, or by using diskpart in windows.

Alternately, you can do the needful and nuke it:

$ dd if=/dev/zeo of=/dev/sda (or whatever your drive device is)

Letting that run for a while should overwrite enough of the partition table to allow you to create a new one. Be aware that sometimes SSDs can be angry about being overwritten in that manor.

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Whenever I copy Windows the bootloader always gets screwed up. I've found that the simplest way to copy it to another drive is to just copy the main Windows partition (I like partclone.ntfs because it only copies used blocks, making it faster), then boot from the Windows installer, go to the troubleshooting and command line, and use bcdboot to install the EFI stuff.

Also sometimes I've had the Windows EFI boot work fine when I use F12 from the BIOS, but selecting Windows loader from the GRUB menu it doesn't work.

Linux usually just works when you copy the EFI and root/home partitions over.

[–] • 0 pt

Thank you for the detailed reply. I'm making it a to-do tomorrow, so we shall see. I appreciate ya!

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

It's a little more involved. I put the EFI partition first, either copying the old one or formatting the new. Then you need the Microsoft Reserved partition (some say 16MB, some say 128MB). Then when doing the bcdboot thing, you need to use to be sure you've got a drive letter for the EFI (I usually assign S:), (use list vol to see logical volumes and assigned letters) and Windows partitions (usually D: here). If that's correct, then

bcdboot D:\Windows -s S:

I'm assuming some familiarity with formatting the disk GPT, creating partitions with the correct partition types (GUID). The bcdboot for me is the "magic" step that's needed to make it happy.

[–] • 1 pt

Try a hammer. I heard it fixed hilldawgs computer problems.

[–] • 0 pt

Ease partition software

[–] • 0 pt

Ok thanks. I’m going to check that out.

[–] • 0 pt

I had an SSD in an old laptop that I just let sit for a few years. When I tried to turn it back on the system was slllllllooooowwww like scary slow. It couldn't complete a normal gui boot up. Just ls'ing a folder in shell took like 5-15 seconds. Eventually I figured out it was the SSD. I had no clue that could happen to them.

[–] • 1 pt

I was using this one until the day I decided to take it out. Should still be healthy.