Feisty live CD killed HD

[Rashkae]

Liam Proven wrote:
> On 04/09/07, m_epling <m_epling at comcast.net> wrote:
>>  thats crazy ...you must be a windows FUD person . no way a live cd can
>> destroy a hard rive even during a format
> 
> Just a small point of order. A software operation *can* render a hard
> disk permanently useless.
> 
> An example:
> 
> Errors in track 0 cannot be mapped out in software, as track 0 is
> where the bad-block error map lives.

Bad blocks in track 0 can't be mapped, but any data written here by 
software in error can most certainly be corrected.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hd? should neatly wipe out any information, good 
or bad, on the hard drive, including anything in the partition tables or 
boot sector.