Sometimes you can need to delete or format a hard drive for some operations. The most common use case for completely and irrevocably wiping a device will be when the device is going to be given away or sold as this is really important for data protection. There are some commands which can help you to do these operations in Linux.
- How To Wipe A Disk Clean Mac
- How To Wipe A Disk Drive
- How To Wipe A Disk Drive Clean
- How To Wipe A Disk Drive Clean
This article shows 4 commands to wipe hard disks or partitions data on your Linux system
1) dd
Select the hard drive that you want to wipe and click on the Wipe Disk feature from the left pane. Select a wipe method from the list and click on OK to go on. Tip: The higher the wiping level you select, the more time the wiping process will take. Choose to either wipe the disk or fill it with junk data, click Erase, and you're done. Roadkil's Disk Wipe hasn't been updated in years, but it hasn't needed to be—it just works.
The dd command can help you to copy and convert a file. The command can overwrite the whole disk with zeros and is considerably faster than generating gigabytes of random data. It offers some operands that you can use to specify what kind of formatting you want. The syntax is:
Only superuser can run this command because you can face a big data loss due to its improper usage.
You can wipe a disk is done by writing new data over every single bit. To further complicate the recovering process we will write over the entire drive with random data.
2) shred
The shred command is used to overwrite the specified files repeatedly and make it difficult for software to recover the data. The syntax is as below
The command also overwrites data in a file or a whole device with random bits, making it nearly impossible to recover. How to get minecraft windows 10 for free. This command permanently erases the data. The command has some options which can be used to wipe a disk as:
- -f changes permissions to allow writing if needed
- -n(iterations=N) overwrites N times instead of the default (3)
- -s (size=N) specifies the number of bytestoshred
- -u truncates and removes files after overwriting
- -v shows verbose information about the progress
- -x does not round file sizes up to the next full block
- -z adds a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding
- -u removes the file after overwriting
So, to wipe the partition you can use
It is possible to use shred with random data as below
3) wipe
The wipe command can be used to securely erase files from magnetic media. You can use the wipe command in order to wipe data on a disk. The wipe command has the command below
The command is not present by default, you need to install it.
On Ubuntu 16.04/18.04
On Centos 7, you need first to download the rpmforge
Install it
Then, install the wipe command
You can wipe a partition as below:
4) scrub
The scrub command can be used to overwrite data using patterns. The command is not available by default, you should need to install it on your Linux system. The syntax is
![How How](https://www.architectureartdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/55-630x410.jpg)
To scrub hard disk, you can do as below
Scrub uses some methods to operate on disks. You can use the dod method to wipe disks.
Wiping a drive is dangerous because you can lose data permanently. You have to be sure to choose the right disk. Additionally, depending on how worried you are about someone taking the data, it can be difficult to ensure that some drives are truly non-recoverable.
Dec 21, 2020 • Filed to: Recover & Repair Files • Proven solutions
It is seen that you empty or clear a DVD or CD if you want to delete the existing content on it or simply when you are going to burn new data to it. In both cases, you should erase data from CD or DVD before formatting the disk. After erasing and formatting, your disk will be ready to reuse. The formatting process is very simple and easy. Here in this article, you will be shown how to carry it out step by step. One thing you should note that the DVD or CD should be rewritable. You might know that in rewritable disks, you can rewrite the data several times.
Part 1: How to Erase a DVD-RW or CD-RW Disk
While you erase the data either from your computer or from the CD/DVD, you should make sure that the files are deleted permanently. And for permanent removal, you should use Stellar BitRaser for the file. It is a software that can erase folders, files, system traces, application traces, activities over the internet, and even the volume from the systems based on windows. This software or tool does not leave any scope to recover and all the crucial information you want to delete stored on your hard disk in the form of files and folders can be permanently erased. Some of the many main features it offers are:
How To Wipe A Disk Clean Mac
- Permanent and 'beyond the scope for recovery' removal of files and folders.
- The traces for installed applications and internet activities is completely erased.
- The tasks to erase files and folders can be scheduled to the predefined time according to the users' preference.
- The tool gives the option to erase data files with a single right-click.
- The tool offers 17 of the most advanced file erasing algorithms.
- After the files are deleted from the system, it generates an erase certificate of the deleted files.
- The versions of Windows supported are Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and windows server 2003, 2008, and 2012.
- Free download Stellar BitRaser for the file on your computer, and connect your CD to PC.
- Launch the eraser software, click the section 'Erase Now' to start to erase data from CD.
- Select your CD and click the 'Erase Now' button to process.
- It will take for a while and you can reboot the system after complete erase.
Tip: While erasing, the data is removed from your disc in a single pass only but if you do not want to leave any traces and feel that a single pass is not enough to remove data, you can use more passes to completely erase data from CD permanently. Suppose that the data you want to erase is valuable and you do not want to leave any kind of traces, then you can go with three passes to be sure.
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Part 2: How to Erase a CD RW on Windows
The above tool helps you to erase the data of CD on most operating systems. Now, below are the few steps mentioned which emphasize especially on the data removal from a CD RW disc on Windows.
- Firstly, you should insert the CD into your computer's disc tray labeled side up.
- Now on the desktop window of your computer, click the start button (having windows logo) placed on the bottom-left corner of the screen.
- Then move your cursor towards folder shaped icon placed on the lower-left side of the Start window. It is the icon of the file explorer. Click on it and file explorer will open on your screen.
- In the file explorer window, click on 'This PC'. The icon for 'This PC' is computer-shaped and is placed on the left side of the File Explorer window. If it is not visible, scroll the left side of the navigation pane up or down. You will find it there.
- In this window, all the drives along with internal and external removable disk drives will be shown. From all those, you should choose the CD/DVD drive. It is an icon with a grey colored hard drive and a CD behind it.
- Now move your cursor to the upper left side of the window and click on the manage tab. It is below the 'uninstall or change a program' and 'system properties' tabs on the ribbon. When you click on the manage tab, a toolbar will appear below it.
- On the media section of this toolbar, click on 'erase this disc' option. After clicking a wizard window will appear.
- In this wizard window, you will see that the 'next' button is present at the bottom-right corner. The moment you click on it, the CD will begin to be erased.
- Your CD will start erasing. You can wait for your CD to finish erasing. The erasing progress can be tracked by observing the bar at the center of the window.
- After that, you will be prompted to click the finish button placed on the bottom right corner of the window. Click it and your data will be erased from the CD.
How To Wipe A Disk Drive
So, these are the simple steps to erase the data from CD. There is some DVD eraser software available in the market which is meant especially to erase data from the CD or DVD and there is some big utility software that has a DVD eraser as a sub-function. One such software is BitRaser for the file which has several functions to erase data from different locations on your computer. It is a tool that is very easy to use and has many algorithms to erase the data permanently leaving no traces behind.
Moreover, Windows provide you the option to erase the data from your CD-RW or DVD-RW by following some simple steps. This way your CD or DVD is ready to be used again for writing data.
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