dalpets wrote:
When I try your 'fdisk' approach it says "This disk is currently in use-repartitioning is probably a bad idea. It's recommended to umount all file systems & swap off all swap positions on the disk".
fdisk works on unmounted disks, or unmounted partitions. If you wish to clear the whole disk, which appears to be the case from your post #1, you need to have that whole disk unmounted, which basically means, to access it, you need to boot a live distribution as Brickwizard said in post #5.
When I try 'umount' it says 'hanging display/entry units to cyclinders (DEPRECATED)'.
When for a second time I run the umount command it says 'changing to sectors' (no deprecation) then a third time it reverts back to 'cylinders'.
If you try to unmount the running system, you will have no running applications to allow it to function. The 1TB disk needs to be unmounted from the point of view of a live distribution, so you need to boot the live distribution, then run a command such as:
to determine the device name of the 1TB hard drive, and then run fdisk with with that device name.
Moreover, when I use fdisk 'g' the system says there is a new disk label for the device that contains a 'dos' signature & it will be removed by a write command in fdisk(8). Is that 'fdisk w' ?
That is simply a warning that you have a dos partition, which you know anyway, and which you evidently intend to wipe, so the warning is of no consequence.
How do I complete the umount process in these circumstances?
You don't have to unmount the 1TB drive if you boot up a live distribution in RAM. It won't be mounted, so it'll be ready for fdisk to change it's partitioning to your preferred arrangement.
How do I manage the "swap" recommendation?
You can research the matter of having or not having a swap partition in your new partitioning scheme. Opinions vary on the matter. If you are uncertain, you could create a swap partition the size of RAM which is safe. A swap partition that size allows for hibernation if you wish to use that function, but as I said, it can be a contentious matter and you need to make your decision on criteria that you are satisfied with.
With regard to your Gparted comment- can it function as a bootable command line?
Gparted can be fine, as dos2unix wrote in post #6. It's a GUI. The command line that achieves the same is: parted, but there's a bit to learn from the man page or other reliable sources if you are not familiar with it.
There are many live distributions that are usable for achieving what you appear to be after. These include a live rescue disk like systemrescue, a live debian, or live fedora etc. There are heaps of them and some based on arch too if you look for them.