Issues with hard disk secure erase

Posted by John Watson on Super User See other posts from Super User or by John Watson
Published on 2012-09-26T20:30:22Z Indexed on 2012/09/26 21:40 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

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hard-drive

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secure-erase

I want to completely wipe all the data and both OSes (Ubuntu and Windows 7) from my hard drive. I tried DBAN but it gives me an error and does not run. I am looking for an alternative. After reading some articles online, I came to know that, using a Linux live CD, it can be done using either of following commands.

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

b) sudo shred -vfz -n 1 /dev/sda

My questions are

1) Which option (a or b) is more secure (wipes everything) and faster?

2) Does either of the options damage the hard drive or anything? I want to use hard drive again i.e. installing Windows and Ubuntu again.

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