[SOLVED] Using Terminal Commands to Wipe Disks on Server

pvelliky · 12-14-2010, 04:59 PM

I'm attempting to do a low level wipe of a server in our office. I originally attempted to use DBAN but it wouldn't recognize the disks.

I've now moved on to attempting to use a Live Boot of Ubuntu 10.10 on a USB drive.

I'm using the following terminal command - sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M

When I did this the first time it simply wiped the USB drive that had Ubuntu on it.

What do I need to do in order to have it wipe all 4 disks on the server instead of the USB Drive?

AlucardZero · 12-14-2010, 05:11 PM

Replace "/dev/sda" with the name of a disk. Repeat for the other 3.

Also, instead of dd, look at "shred" which is made for this.

Noway2 · 12-14-2010, 06:15 PM

Running the command 'df' in a terminal will show you what /dev/sdX is mounted as what partition. Apparently your first hard drive isn't sda. Sda will apply to a SCSI or SATA drive. If you have an IDE drive it will be a HD device instead of SD.

AlucardZero · 12-14-2010, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noway2

Running the command 'df' in a terminal will show you what /dev/sdX is mounted as what partition.

If it's not mounted, "fdisk -l" will give you a list.

Quote:

Sda will apply to a SCSI or SATA drive. If you have an IDE drive it will be a HD device instead of SD.

Since 2.6.20, even IDE drives are sdX.

pvelliky · 12-15-2010, 09:52 AM

Thanks guys, you were a huge help.

Running exactly as I had hoped.