Issues with hard disk secure erase
- by John Watson
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.