- Secure erase external hard drive install#
- Secure erase external hard drive portable#
- Secure erase external hard drive download#
Those recommending to use shred are giving bad advice.
Secure erase external hard drive install#
The easiest way is to install GParted and use it: sudo apt-get install gpartedĬhoose your device in the upper-right corner list. sudo shred -v -n1 -z /dev/sdXĪfter this, you would have to repartition the device. You can also set all bits to zero after the last iteration by adding the option -z, I prefer to do this. This might take a while, depending on the size of your external hard drive (I think it takes twenty minutes or so for my 4 GB flash drive). You can add the option -n N to only do this N times, to save time on large capacity devices. This will overwrite all the blocks on the device with random data three times, the -v flag is for verbose and will print the current progress. Then run the following, replacing /dev/sdX with the name of your device: sudo shred -v /dev/sdX Unmount all currently mounted partitions on that device, if any. Make sure it is the correct device, picking the wrong device will wipe it. You can use sudo fdisk -l to list all connected storage devices, and find your external hard drive there. This might be something like /dev/sdb or /dev/hdb (but not like /dev/sdb1, that's a partition). Remember to enter the correct drive or partition when executing this command.There's a command-line utility called shred, which overwrites data in a file or a whole device with random bits, making it nearly impossible to recover.įirst of all, you need to identify the name of the device. The above command will write zeros to all the blocks, a block size of 4096, in the specified device or partition, sda in this case. If you want to reuse the drive, you can type: if=dev/zero of=dev/sda bs=4096 This powerful command can be used to convert, copy, and destroy data. If you’re familiar with Linux or Unix, then you might already know about the built-in dd command.
Secure erase external hard drive portable#
This handy software is available for Windows and Linux, comes with a simple GUI, and can even be installed on a live USB with its portable version.
Secure erase external hard drive download#