how not to initialize HD

[Tim]

On Mon, 2010-08-02 at 08:46 -0400, Paul Cartwright wrote:
> wonder what happens if I press that button NOW..."NO, DON'T DO
> IT :-0)"

I wouldn't.

I've read tales of people who've pressed such buttons.  The computer has
some simple firmware that loads software from certain partitions.  If
your drive isn't laid as it was expecting, odd things happen.  And I
seem to recall horror stories about it helpfully rewriting some boot
sectors, too.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.