Fastest way to 'zero' a drive using Linux

vivekd · 02-12-2004, 04:49 AM

I'm currently using partimage to image machines with Win2K (NT File Systems) and its highly recommended to wipe a drive before it is reimaged with an O/S, thus elimating all of its partition table, data, etc... Making it look like a new disk

What is the fastest way to 'zero' a drive in linux using GNU software? I've heard of wipe.c and Debian's sterilize, however, they are damn slow just to make one round of zeros on the disk. Since its just imaging and not for security purposes, it doesn't have to be 'superiorly' secure by making 20 rounds, one will be enough...

The fastest I've seen is IBM's wipe.exe utility. Is there any GNU software out that is equivalent in terms of purpose and speed?

This also happens to be quite slow, when comapred to IBM's wipe.exe utility.

Code:

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hdabs=<size>M count=1

PS: I wish I could paste some links to these utilities that I am talking about, but I haven't made 5 posts yet

ugenn · 02-12-2004, 06:40 AM

did you enable ide-pci bus mastering when running dd?

vivekd · 02-12-2004, 04:25 PM

All I have done is:

Code:

hdparm -d1 /dev/hdX

What else could be done?

Quote:

Originally posted by ugenn
did you enable ide-pci bus mastering when running dd?