On Thursday 03 August 2006 01:43, Greg Freemyer wrote:
On 8/2/06, Istvan Gabor
wrote: Hello all:
I use suse linux 10.0 default.
My hard drive has damaged.
(from dmesg: Additional sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 8650815 ... etc.)
Whenever the OS can't read something it changes the filesystem mounting as read-only.
Since the hard drive still has the warranty I would like to replace it. But before bringing back I'd like to remove some files from the drive. However I can't write or delete on the damaged harddisk since it always gets mounted as read-only.
How could I still erase the drive or force mounting the drive as read-write?
Once your ready to totally wipe the drive, boot from the install CD/DVD.
Then go into rescue mode.
From there you can do something like:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx bs=4k conv=noerror
The above should wipe out 100% of your data, so don't do it until your ready.
Also /dev/hdx will need to be set to the correct value for your machine.
FYI: If your paranoid a lot of people claim you need to do multiple passes. 3? 7? 35? All depends who you ask. Personally, I think 1 is fine.
The really paranoid people would do this: shred -x /dev/hdx I did that once with a USB-pendrive. See "man shred" for an explanation. BTW, it is *thorough*, but be prepared for a loooooooong execution time! You might have to leave the pc on for the night. Cheers, Leen