sudo wipe command in terminal error

Question

I did the command

sudo wipe /dev/sdb

where /dev/sdb is my 1TB HDD and I got a "command not found" message. How would I be able to prepare the drive for new OS? Wipe it, I mean.

Thanks

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 10 '13 at 00:03

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Try Gparted Partition Editor from System-->Administration to format your external HDD.Please note that,to format a partition it must be unmounted.

answered Nov 10 '13 at 00:03

Avinash Raj

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 10 '13 at 00:16

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Actually wipe is not pre-installed application and you have to install it manually.

open your terminal and type as

sudo apt-get install wipe

then run the command again.

answered Nov 10 '13 at 00:16

Raja G

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I did just that thank you, I got fatal error: could not lstat: no such file or directory. Could you help again – user214176 Nov 10 '13 at 01:57
are you mentioning the proper command ? could you place the log here ? – Raja G Nov 10 '13 at 01:58
I have just removed the drive and dealt wit it differently. I must study ubuntu a little more. thanks – user214176 Nov 10 '13 at 03:34

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 10 '13 at 06:57

This will wipe all partitions, MBR, and data. Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=1M

Note: You need to replace x with the device name you want to overwrite. Also make sure that you really want to do this, because it might not be reversible. So make sure that you have a backup of anything that you want off the drive before attempting this.

this worked the second time around. got it. – user214176 Nov 10 '13 at 19:33 — user214176, Nov 10 '13 at 19:33

sudo wipe command in terminal error

3 Answers3