I think I destroyed my hard drive?

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So I was messing around with installing Fedora because my Windows installation was acting on low memory (maybe that was the sign of the thing I'm about to say) so under "Places" in live CD mode it appears I have 7 mounted devices on this PC. No wonder it might be acting goofy. Anyway, I was very blurred and confused that I was just doing random things in the terminal not too aware of what was going on and I'm afraid I need to get a new hard drive.

Acer (eMachines) EL1360G-U12WP
2GB DDR3 Memory
500GB Hard Drive
AMD 1.6Ghz E-350 processor
AMD Radeon 6310

I'm not sure Fedora's the way to go for low-spec hardware. For the specs you have, Mint or Ubuntu would be more appropriate.

Well, I thought Fedora and Ubuntu/Mint were on the same spec level. But I'm not really debating Linux vs. Windows here, because I want to know how I can clean off my hard drive and if it's gone really bad, I should install a new one. I am running Fedora 20 live CD by the way which is why I'm typing this. But otherwise, yeah it's a pretty crappy low-spec computer. One of my worst investments ever.

Nah it's actually pretty hard to brick a hard drive since most of what it needs to function on a basic level is in the firmware and takes some pretty determined work to modify unless using manufacturers software specifically made for that task.

If all else fails just deleting all the partitions and recreating them through the OS installer usually sorts things out.

What about on my live CD I see multiple mounted drives. Tomorrow I'll post a screenshot so you can understand what I'm trying to explain.

As long as a hard drive is not destroyed physically it is fine and can be repaired using software. Usually just deleting the corrupted partitions is all you need.

I suggest burning http://www.hirensbootcd.org/about/ CD and using it. It contains a lot of tools used to fix broken computers.

Unfortunately I have no idea about Linux OS partitions (all I know is that Linus uses different partition system and HDD formating than Windows and Linux seems to be installed on a few partitions, not just one) so I won't help with that one. If it was my computer I would just delete all Linux partitions, create a new Windows one and install a Windows on it. I know that installing a Linux on a computer with Windows can cause problems. It is possible to do but requires some tricks.

Live CDs mount a filesystem in system RAM to run the OS, and they also typically auto mount every partition on every drive they can find. If your drive has multiple partitions (with or without your knowledge), they will show up as different devices.

So my devices in the file manager read:

16 GB Volume (ignore that)
_Fedora-Live-MAT
717 MB Volume
8.2 KB Volume
_Fedora-Live-MAT
_Fedora-Live-MAT

????

This confuses me. Can somebody who knows a little more about computers help me?

We need some info.
- Did you start a Fedora installation? Or just used a Fedoa live cd? If you started the installation, did it finish? If it didn't finish, where did it fail?
- What do you want? A Fedora installation? Or you want back your Windows? Or a dual-boot system where you can choose between Windows and Fedora?
- What is the problem now? If you take out the Fedora cd and (re)boot your system, what happens?
- Were there any data on the hard drive that you want to keep?

Note: If you use a live CD, the filesystem information in a file manager is not necessarily complete. On the one hand partitions that exist on the hard drive are not certainly mounted when using a live CD, one the other hand there may be temporary filesystems shown that exist only in the memory.

Actually I have done a good job of trashing hard drives at work, caused by running in an unconditioned room that can hit 100°F in the summer.

I have found the utility MHDD to be useful to diagnose hard drives on Intel machines. It doesn't run under Windows or MS-DOS, I believe it was written in assembly by a Russian dude, Dmitri P.

It is included in the LiveCD SystemRescueCD, which in itself is a bootable Linux CD - but - you don't start Linux, you move the cursor down to something like "low level utilities", then pick MHDD.

Going from memory, first thing is, you can't diagnose a slave HDD, on the master. Not sure how that works if the drives are SATA. And as I recall, you press F4 one or two times. It scans the hard drive recording how much time it takes to read a track or something like that. Shorter is better. As the drive gets warn out, the seek times become greater. I had a hard drive on the verge, it light up like a christmas tree.

So when you get all done, you should have an idea of what state the HD is in.

<<<<Assuming you care nothing about what is on the hard drive>>>>

You can then use the Linux on the CD to get gparted running, a graphical partition editor. You can format, create partitions, delete partitions, and format in many styles.

You can use the program ntfs-3g to go snooping into the HD assuming it was Windows before hand.

I use the program ImgBurn to take the .ISO file into a bootable CD. I use version 3.5.7, I am not sure if 3.5.8 has ad-ware in it.

You can also supposedly create a bootable USB key containing system rescue CD. I have not had much luck with it. You also have to know how to go into your BIOS and enable booting from a USB key. You might have to go into BIOS to enable booting from a CD for that matter.

You can also format a HD at the beginning of an XP installation. I personally have fallen in love with SystemRescueCD, because it also has a slim browser. Configuring the network connection can be tricky if your company uses fixed IP addresses.

When booting SRCD, I pick the option to load everything on the CD into memory, so I can take the CD out.

When you want the thing to stop, you type
shutdown -h now
or, just turn the computer off.