I have always used third party tools to zero write hard disks when I’m done using them or when some body requests it done. However, I have started using a external hard drive enclosure and I wanted to do it within my Ubuntu.


dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

Since I only have a single hard drive the external drive became /dev/sdb. You can double check to make sure your wiping the right drive by using…


sfdisk -l