LinuxQuestions.org
Did you know LQ has a Linux Hardware Compatibility List?

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.

You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have access to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!

Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.

Are you new to LinuxQuestions.org? Visit the following links:
Site Howto | Site FAQ | Sitemap | Register Now

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.

Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Linux Answers > Hardware
User Name
Password

By Darin at 2004-12-01 16:48
Case:
I have some hard drives that I had donated, on the condition that I zero-fill them. Zero-fill will erase all data on a hard drive, but this needs to be differentiated from a low-level format, which could damage newer (pretty much anything over 512MB) drives. The key is to find a way to wipe the data on a hard drive without destroying the current manufacturer's low-level format. I searched the web and found DOS utilities that sounded like low-level format utilities and usually were vendor specific, but then I ran into some information about using the simple Linux dd command to zero-fill.

Solution:
What you need is a bootable Linux, there are several available, booting a live Linux such as knoppix or even Tom's RTB, a bootable Linux that fits on floppy, but I happened to use my trusty Slackware Installation CD which, during the install, dumps you to a handy root shell for this. When you boot into a command shell, as root, simply pick the drive you want to fill, hda is primary master, hdb is primary slave, hdc is secondary master, sda is the first SCSI drive, etc, and use the command:
Code:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M
WARNING! This will destroy ALL data on the hard drive, all boot sector info and all data on all partitions. It will not however render the disk useless, you simply have a clean disk that only needs to have partitions created and a new boot sector installed, which will happen when you install any OS including Linux or Windows. This is a good way to clean up any bad partitions, viruses, botched installs or data that you don't want to be seen (OK, it is theoretically possible to forensically retrive data after using this method, but not likely and not doable by the average computer user) and it is simple to do with existing GNU/Linux!
29 comments

read full thread



Add LQ To Your Yahoo Add LQ To Your Google Add LQ To Your MSN Add LQ To Your Blog
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:38 PM.

Main Menu
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
RSS2  LQ Podcast
RSS2  LQ Radio
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration