Re: [SLUG] wiping a HDD clean

[Doug Stalker <dougs@nospam.technologist.com>]

Well I ran dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda from a copy of tomsrtbt, and it found so many IO
errors on the drive I'm not even going to try and salvage it.

Thanks all for your help, between dd, badblocks, fdisk and mkfs I'll be able to get
everything done that I need to.

 - Doug
John Ferlito wrote:

> >
> > Doesnt the action "format" inherently imply mkfs cause
> > formatting *IS* making a filesystem.
> >
>         I think he's reffering to quick format as opposed to a normal format. ie
> when you format an ext2 parition it writes in the superblock and any other important meta
> information and thats it.
>
>         Where as when you format a DOS disk it seems to do something to every track
> probably zeroing them out or something.

It's not zeroing them (which is what I thought it would do also)  At any time up to 99%
completed you can turn the system off, turn it back on and all your data is still there.  If
anyone knows what it is doing, I'd love to know.

 - Doug

--
_____________________________________________________________
  Network Operations Engineer - Big Pond Advance Satellite
 Ericsson Australia - Level 5, 184 The Broadway, Sydney 2000
  Ph: +61-416-085-390   Email: doug@nospam.satellite.bigpond.com


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