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
