Wipe a HDD with Ubuntu

brendon_recce · Aug 2, 2013

I built a new rig recently and didn't have money for Windows at the time, so I installed Ubuntu. I now have Windows 8 installed on an SSD, and I want to wipe the hard drive with Ubuntu on it and make it 'virgin'. I will be using this drive for storage now, but since Ubuntu is installed on it, I can't do anything. I can't figure out how to wipe it in Windows or Ubuntu, so if someone can shed some light on this for me, that would be great.

Alabalcho · Aug 2, 2013

You don't have to wipe it out - just repartition it.
You can also wipe out first couple of sectors from Ubunti

Code:

$ sudo fdisk -l
$ sudo dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/XYZ bs=1M count=10
[/code
First command will show you all the partitions on all hard drives, to help you with second command.
where XYZ is device name of your hard drive, e.g. /dev/sdb if this is your second SATA drive. Be extremely carefull with that name!
The count= and bs= parameters will wipe out first ten megabytes from that drive - more than enough for Windows to consider it "virgin" ;)

brendon_recce · Aug 2, 2013

Alabalcho :

You don't have to wipe it out - just repartition it.
You can also wipe out first couple of sectors from Ubunti

Code:

$ sudo fdisk -l
$ sudo dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/XYZ bs=1M count=10
[/code
First command will show you all the partitions on all hard drives, to help you with second command.
where XYZ is device name of your hard drive, e.g. /dev/sdb if this is your second SATA drive. Be extremely carefull with that name!
The count= and bs= parameters will wipe out first ten megabytes from that drive - more than enough for Windows to consider it "virgin" ;)[/quotemsg]

If I copy and paste that into the terminal, what will happen? Once the first ten megabytes from the drive is wiped, does that enable Windows to recognize it under 'My Computer'? When I go to 'My Computer' in Windows now, it just shows my C: drive and D: (recovery partition). When I right click on 'My Computer' and click 'Manage', I can see my drive with Ubuntu on it but I don't know what to do from there.

Alabalcho · Aug 5, 2013

In order for Windows to recognize it (after wiping), you need to partition it - right-click on My Computer, Manager, Disk Manager, find your hard disk, and create single (or multiple, as you want) partition(s).

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Wipe a HDD with Ubuntu

brendon_recce

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