How to wipe/format entire disk using gparted?

Question

With gnome-disk-utility alias palimpsest there is an option to format entire disk with partitioning scheme "none" or something similar.

How do I do that in gparted?

(? is it the "loop" option ?)

Or does it not have that feature?

Solution 1

The first two answers do not actually wipe the disk.

Formatting or re-writing the partition table, as suggested in the first 2 answers, does NOT delete the data and the data can be recovered in about 20 minutes.

This is because deleting and recreating partition table does not delete data at all. You can recover data even after quick format of partition. It is not a rocket science - even simplest file recovery utilities will recover this data.

Although gparted can re-format the drive, gparted will not wipe the data.

In order to wipe the data you need to write data to the disk. This can be done with a variety of tools from dd to dban to a number of command line tools.

See Securely erase hard drive using the Disk Utility for details.

Solution 2

How to remove all partitions using GParted

Warning: This will not remove the data from the disk. After doing this, data will still be recoverable. But it does remove the partition information so the entire disk is available for new partitions

If you want to delete the system partition (with / on) you'll need to start GParted from a live cd ("try ubuntu" mode)

1. Install GParted with sudo apt-get install gparted and start it

2. Select the correct device (physical hard drive) in the right upper corner (make sure to wipe the hard drive, and not your USB stick)
   

3. Click(in the top menu) on Device > Create Partition Table

4. Select MSDos or GPT and click apply (you might get a warning about not being able to inform the kernel)

5. Reboot

Solution 3

First part of the answer: gparted can be used to remove the partitions of a drive so it may be reused.

Second part of the answer: No, gparted does not actually wipe the partitions in a secure way so the data is non-recoverable.

It is a trivial process to use gparted to select the partitions and tell gparted to delete them.

If you want to actually wipe the disk in such a way that the data is unrecoverable, follow the instructions found at the accepted answer here:

How can I securely erase a hard drive?

EXCERPT:

sudo shred -v /dev/sdX

shred will overwrite the data areas with random information so the original files and directories are not recoverable.

It does take some time to complete this command, so be patient.

Comments

[nlognfan]

and should I use fat16 or fat32 on a 4GB usb drive

[Panther]

possible duplicate of Securely erase hard drive using the Disk Utility

[Merlijn Sebrechts]

Not a duplicate since OP explicitly asks how to do it in Gparted and the question you link to is talking about disks and does not even state how to do it in disks.

[karel]

possible duplicate of How to format hard drive

[Panther]

This does NOT delete the data and is very bad advice.

[Panther]

This does NOT delete the data and is very bad advice.

[Panther]

wipe generally means remove the data.

[Merlijn Sebrechts]

This is where our understanding of this question differs from yours. If you look at the disks utility he is talking about, the default behavior of that option is to not overwrite the data. From my experience, when people want to overwrite the data, they say so explicitly. However as long as OP does not respond, there is no way of knowing what he wants. He explicitly states that he knows how to do it in "Disks" though, so your answer isn't more useful than any other here.

[Panther]

I did not post an answer. I downvoted yours with a comment as to why. If you wish you may ask to OP for clarification, but you made an assumption of the meaning of the work "wipe" and if your assumption is wrong the consequence is that potentially sensitive data can be recovered. It is for this reason I down voted your answer as, IMO, you should ask for clarification before you assume and when your assumptions are potentially harmful I will down vote.