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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]