Why I shouldn't listen to other peoples suggestions all the time...

[Dark Millennium]

Ok, I'm told by my teacher to install Red Hat Linux 7.2 on computer with 2 Hard drives. One of them being a fujitsu 20 GB Hard Drive with W2K Server on it. The other a Quantum 8 GB with Linux 7.1.
I wanted to wipe out the Linux Hard Drive and put 7.2 on that one. There was nothing that needed to be saved or backed up.
I work with a group so I told them that and after speaking to the teacher decided it would be best to wipe out both Hard Drives, put Linux 7.2 on the 20 GB first and then put W2K on the 6 GB after the installation of Linux.
5 hours later and a lot of web searching we managed to get them both up and running without formatting and reinstalling.
The group looks at this as a learning experience. I'm looking at it being 50 times more work than was required.

Anyone else ever had this problem with group members trying to do something simple and making it hard?

[KINGofBLEH]

Thats one of the pitfalls of traditional classroom IT instruction. All of my training has been with corporate MCT's in a high-pressure, deadline-driven training environment. I find I learn more when under pressure than when I have too much time and start screwing around with silly solutions to simple problems.

[PitaBred]

Ummm... if nothing needed to be saved, why not format and reinstall? A Low-Level format overwrites everything, and will clear a lot of data errors on a HDD (if any exist)

Tell your group that it was a learning experience, BUT, if you can do it faster/better, that's what the industry needs. Tinker on your own time, get the job done when you're on the clock...

[Dark Millennium]

Actually just a regular format with either fdisk or another utility I use delpart, would have done the job fine but the group didn't want to lose all their "work".
At least things are going better now. Both drives are working fine and the assignment got done in time.