Wipe ReiserFS formatted drive in Windows? Any other way other than this?

[night201]

In response to my post in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5301.0...

 

I had 2 Seagate 1.5TB drives that I had used as a parity and data drive.  I replaced them with WD drives and I'm looking to wipe/secure erase them before I return for credit.

 

All of my wipe tools are in Windows, but Windows (7) can't see the drive.

 

What's the easiest way to do this?  Boot into a Linux distro via Virtual Machine or LiveBoot and then reformat the drive there?  If so, is there a system format that I can format via Linux that Windows will be able to see and then wipe every sector on the drive?

 

Is there even a Seagate tool that can just restore the drive to factory with no partition and then I can wipe that way?  I didn't see one...

 

Thanks!

 

[Joe L.]

In response to my post in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5301.0...

 

I had 2 Seagate 1.5TB drives that I had used as a parity and data drive.  I replaced them with WD drives and I'm looking to wipe/secure erase them before I return for credit.

 

All of my wipe tools are in Windows, but Windows (7) can't see the drive.

 

What's the easiest way to do this?  Boot into a Linux distro via Virtual Machine or LiveBoot and then reformat the drive there?  If so, is there a system format that I can format via Linux that Windows will be able to see and then wipe every sector on the drive?

 

Is there even a Seagate tool that can just restore the drive to factory with no partition and then I can wipe that way?  I didn't see one...

 

Thanks!

 

formatting does not wipe a drive.  Nor does removal of the partition...  Your best bet is the preclear_disk.sh script on the unRAID server itself.  You don't need the pre-read/post-read phases, so you can use the "-n" option to skip them.  The preclear_disk.sh script will write zeros to the entire drive.

 

Joe L.

 

 

[purko]

...I'm looking to wipe/secure erase them before I return for credit.

 

You can use the Linux dd command to wipe an entire disk with random data.

If the disk is still connected inside your server, type this in the console:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx bs=8b conv=notrunc,noerror

Replace the 'sdx' above with the name of the disk that you want to wipe.

And make very sure you don't type the wrong name there!

 

Or, if you are really paranoid about it, you can make it do several passes, like (three in this example):

for n in {1..3}; do dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx bs=8b conv=notrunc,noerror; done

 

Purko