Problem Using dd to Zero Some Old Hard Drives

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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1

I have been trying to wipe some hard drives from old computers at work. The way I have been going about it is using a Ubuntu 14.04.2 live USB, opening a terminal, running the command "sudo fdisk -l" to find info on the hard drive, and then "sudo dd if=/dev/zero | pv | of=/dev/". In this case the disk is at /dev/sda. It worked on the first computer I did this to but the second one isn't working. It doesn't give me any errors, it just doesn't zero the drive. When I "cd /dev/sda" it says "bash: cd: sda: Not a directory".

If someone could explain to me where I have gone wrong that would be greatly appreciated :).

2

You cannot cd to /dev/sda because that is a file. You can try mounting a partition on a folder if you want to see what's on the disk.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

should always work. Did you check if the hdd is at /dev/sda?

3

"sudo fdisk -l" results shows:

Disk /dev/sda: 160 GB ...
Device Boot
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2

I think that means it is at /dev/sda

4

I got it working. Turns out pv was causing the problem some how. When I ran "sudo dd if=dev/zero of=dev/sda" it worked.