using parted to erase whole disk

shanenin · 11-02-2005, 10:10 AM

I wanted to use parted to automatically partition my harddrive. As far as I can tell, their is no option to erase the drive in one step. I can do it using a bash or python script that gets output from the command

Code:

parted /dev/hda -s print

with this output I could manulally have the script run this command on each of the found partitions

Code:

parted /dev/hda -s rm $NUMBER

before I write this script, I am wondering if ther is a way to just erase the whole drive with one parted command. for example, if this command was available

Code:

parted /dev/hda -s rm all

tredegar · 11-02-2005, 11:19 AM

You might like to take a look at this link (describing Partition Tables):

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partition..._tables-2.html

It seems to me that if you just use dd to zero out the partition table, then all the partitions are "Deleted". Then you can start reconstructing them. Or maybe it isn't that simple?

HTH

shanenin · 11-02-2005, 11:36 AM

thanks for the suggestion, that sounds like that might be a good solution :-)