Re: Clear HDD of old OS, etc?

[Petro <petro@auctionwatch.com>]

On Fri, May 31, 2002 at 11:28:39AM -0600, Dave Price wrote:
> Hi,
> I am looking for a quick way to clear an HDD of old data, partitions,
> etc.
> I found this on /. thru a google search:
> dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hdX 
> When i do this from a console shell after booting from a woody install
> disk, It does not seem to work ... i.e. I can still see the old
> partition table in fdisk ...
> Is there maybe a better dd invocation ?

    Don't bother with /dev/random, just use /dev/zero. 

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX, where X is *just* the letter. 

    if you do /dev/hda1 or the like, you'll bypass the partition table
    and boot sector. 

    Better would be to find the number of blocks, and the block size of
    the disk, then do:

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hd<x> bs=<blocksize> count=<# of blocks> 

    This way you get them all. 

    Of course, don't count on this as a security thing. Maybe against
    your little brother, or the guy across the street, but not real
    security. Use Thermite. 

-- 
My last cigarette was roughly 44 days, 16 hours, 7 minutes ago.
YHBW


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