Check and zero-uot HDD

[Ozzi]

Hey
Noob question: I want to use the shred command from a live cd to wipe all data from my HDD and I would like to know if this command also reports any bad sectors thai it finds on that HDD (like a surface scan). If not, could you recommend me another program that checks and erases the disk in one run?
Thanks.

[devils casper]

boot up from any LiveCD and execute this code in terminal/konsole

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=521 count=1

you must have 'root' privileges to execute that command.
'dd' command will *wipe* harddisk but it wont check bad sectors. scan harddisk with UBCD or the tools provided by your disk manufacturer.

[Ozzi]

Anw will it erase and check my hdd in one run? The drive is pretty old and I noticed both erase and disk scan take very long and I wouldnt want to do them one after the other.

[devils casper]

as i mentioned earlier, dd command will wipe harddisk only and wont scan it. 'dd' command erases partition table and boot loader, and takes only 2-5 seconds.

scan disk through UBCD. that will take some time.

[Ozzi]

I'll go with UBCD then. I don't want to simply repartition/reformat my HDD, but erase it. Now if I could only find an iso download on an english site...

Thanks for your quick replys.

[devils casper]

Now if I could only find an iso download on an english site...

i posted a link of english site only. post #2.

[Ozzi]

True, but that's just a list of mirrors.The only mirrors I've found to host the 4.03 iso image on that page were in germen/italian. Anyway, I figured out the german one and I'm downloading it right now.