wipe hard drive

My laptop is about 4 years old (a Toshiba L-35 satellite). Over the course of that time, I had to reinstall the factory software (windows) about 4 times. I switched to Mint last month, installed it twice, and have just done my second installation of Ubuntu. I am wondering if I need to wipe the hard drive. I just tried to install the restricted extras via terminal and ran into problems. It looked like the virtualbox I tried to install before was trying to come through. Doesn't the O/S wipe the hard drive clean when it's installed? Or would a wipe get rid of any extra little bits that are rattling around (so to speak)?

haapsalu_sall said: Doesn't the O/S wipe the hard drive clean when it's installed? Or would a wipe get rid of any extra little bits that are rattling around (so to speak)?

Yes.

If you have a separate home folder, you can choose not to format it and keep all info on it. But as a general rule, yes everything gets wiped out.

I suggest starting a help thread for any problems you may be having.

Thanks.