Trying to format my HDDs...

[Myles Green]

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On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 21:19:42 -0000
"Ben Hodgson" <ubuntu-list at blahpro.com> wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> I apologise in advance for this being a little off topic - but I
> figured that if anyone would know, it would be you guys! I have a
> bunch of PCs that I want to get rid of and I am looking to see if
> there is a Linux distro (or anything I can just boot from CD) whose
> sole purpose is to format hard drives? Basically, I just want to have
> a CD that I can boot from that loads a utility into the RAM to fully
> format a hard disk.
> 
> Does such a thing exist?

Yes, it exists on pretty much every linux system out there (LiveCD,
tomsrtbt etc). It's called dd and you use it like this to wipe a drive:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hd? (? is what ever drive you want to wipe)

Of course, if it's sensitive data you want to erase, then you would want
to do the above 3 or more times so as to completely overwrite all the
data untill it can't be recovered. Be warned, there's no indication of
progress, it just spits you back to a command prompt when it's done, and
it can take a _long_ time, especially for a >= 40G drive. The main thing
is, it works and it's free. =)

HTH,

- -- 
Myles Green <rmg57 at telus dot net> Calgary AB Canada
Ubuntu Linux 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog" Dev. Branch 
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
GnuPG public key (9D02F338)  http://keyserver-beta.pgp.com/
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