How do I erase a hard drive? « Tricks and Tips about Systems/Network

How do I erase a hard drive?

August 8, 2008 at 10:32 am | In Linux | Leave a Comment

dd is a handy tool used for making copys. It can also be used to quite securely wipe harddrives:

for (( i = 0;i<10;i++ )); do

  dd if=/dev/random of=dev/hda && dd if=dev/zero of=/dev/hda

done

This will overwrite your entire hard drive (in this case seen as hda by Linux) with random information ten time