Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Preparing a laptop for sale

[Marcus Wanner]

On 12/18/2009 8:58 PM, Grant wrote:
>>> I used unetbootin to install Damn Small Linux on the 512MB bootable
>>> USB key, and I'm booted into it.  /dev/sda is my HD, and I'm running:
>>>
>>> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
>>>
>>> The USB LED is blinking rapidly, but the HD LED is showing no
>>> activity.  Is there any way to tell if the HD is being wiped?
>>>
>> The hdd IS being wiped, if you have the right device (which you do, don't
>> worry!). However, I would recommend running with if=/dev/urandom as that
>> will overwrite it with random bits instead of just zero. However, since it's
>> already being done with zeros and a hard drive would usually be sold with
>> all bits set to zero, I think what you are doing will be fine.
>>
> I checked on it after a few hours and it said "No space left on
> device" and the process had exited.  I rebooted the system without the
> key inserted and unfortunately it came back up to the normal HD so
> nothing has been wiped.  Any idea what I did wrong?
>
First of all, make sure that /dev/sda really is your hdd. You can do 
this in different ways, e.x. mounting the partition with your system on 
it and seeing if the files are there). Keep in mind that I believe the 
latest version of DSL still uses /dev/hda for IDE disks, so try that if 
it turns out that /dev/sdx isn't your disk.

Marcus