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disc zero-ing on linux

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gabriel
Posts: 73
Joined: 2005-04-17 23:14
Location: Poland - Warsaw

disc zero-ing on linux

#1 Post by gabriel »

Hi, I need a hard drive zero-ed. I know, that there's partition magic 8.0 on windows that can do it, but I can't find anything for linux.

It's an old drive with winxp installed previously (ntfs) that completely broke down. Thanks :)
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Jeroen
Debian Developer, Site Admin
Debian Developer, Site Admin
Posts: 483
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#2 Post by Jeroen »

Code: Select all

cat /dev/zero > /dev/hdb
will zero your second harddisk (the one being on the primary IDE controller as slave). It doesn't have any progress indicator though, you might install 'pv' for that, and use:

Code: Select all

pv /dev/zero > /dev/hdb
instead. If you know how big your harddisk is, you'll be able to see how it goes.

Be careful to really know for sure that you're zero'ing the correct disk! Usually, doing 'cfdisk /dev/hdb' for example will show you a partition table, so you can identify the disk.

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