Mike Gilbert <flop...@gentoo.org> writes: [...]
> If you are not worried about securely removing all data and simply > want to fool fdisk into thinking your drive is empty, use the wipefs > utility. This will zero-out key bytes like the MBR, partition table, > filesystem magic numbers, etc. > > You'll want to run it once for each partition, and then once for the > whole device. > > wipefs -a /dev/sdx1 > wipefs -a /dev/sdx2 > wipefs -a /dev/sdx This sounds like more what I had in mind... there is no worry about making data irrecoverable. I'll check this out... booting the hardware with a liveCD of some sort that I know has that tool on it. SystemrescueCD probabably has it. Nikos Chantziaras <rea...@gmail.com> writes: [...] > You can use cfdisk (or another partitioning tool) and delete all partitions. > > Then, delete the MBR (Master Boot Record), which is where boot > managers put themselves. You do that with: > > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/your_hard_disk bs=446 count=1 [...] This may be all I really need. I had considered it to start but had the notion that it might not be that hard to return a disk to its new condition ... apparently that is not really all that easy or in this case ... even necessary. I've googled fairly extensively on the subject and did not find a way described anywhere to return a disk to what is called its raw state. Or, put another way, the state a disk is in why you buy one new. There may even be legal ramifications I suppose along the line of selling used discs as new after some kind of processing.
