Brain fart: no format option on a pen drive pop-up menu?

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Tue, 2011-08-30 at 11:10 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: 
> On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:05:11 -0500
> Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net> wrote:
> 
> > Once upon a time, Alan Cox <alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> said:
> > > If you want to erase your drive, issue a secure erase command. It's as
> > > simple as that.
> > 
> > Is there a simple way to do that on Linux?
> 
> hdparm supports it.
> 
> hdparm --security-erase NULL (or the password) /dev/whatever
> 
> Note that it wipes the entire media not a partition...

Oh, if only I'd known two weeks ago.  I tried "wipe /dev/sdb" on a 1TB
drive replaced under warranty and it took over a week to make one pass.
It wanted to do four passes (six for enhanced security), but I had to
give up and ship the drive.

Great tip, thanks.

> 

-- 
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Mathematical Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu