> Capstone (so to speak): > > I booted from the Seagate CD and ran both the quick and full diagnostics on > the disk. It failed them both. > > Now I'm wondering what's the best way to destroy all the data on the drive > so I can return it without my stuff, unreliable or not, on it. > > I suppose a dd from /dev/zero to the whole disk might work - am I right? > I'm not sure what block size or how many - it's a 400Gb drive.... > My favorite utility for whiping a drive is DBAN: http://dban.sourceforge.net/ You can get as crazy as you want to ;-) including specifying multiple pass etc. His screenshots give a better idea of what some of the options are but so far, it's better than even some of the commercial applications they were using at my current client site. -- Lonny -- "To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work ON it."