Can I forcibly take over a hard drive?


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Ok, I'm a having this issue with an external hard drive with my iBook (see here). The problem has come back again, I don't know if it is the hardware or OS X or what. At any rate, I want to simply wipe it out using my linux desktop, and while I can read it... it cannot delete or format, etc, sinc eI don't 'own' it. Any thoughts on how I can take over the ownership and wipe it out?

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If you had a Windows PC you could do it. Did it come with an installation disk?

That's not the problem. The problem is that the drive itself is disallowing anything to be done to it.

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If you had a Windows PC you could do it. Did it come with an installation disk?

At the moment I don't have windows installed anywhere.

That's not the problem. The problem is that the drive itself is disallowing anything to be done to it.

Exactly, I can read the disk in linux (Ubuntu 8.04) but cannot delete anything. It is totally unreadable/unmountable on my iBook. So I figured at least with my Ubuntu system I can get to it, so how to sledgehammer the damn thing?

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That's not the problem. The problem is that the drive itself is disallowing anything to be done to it.

I know that but if he had the CD that normally comes with a drive he could format it, or at least wipe it and re install it. Most HD companies such as WD / Seagate have downloadable tools that can be used.

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Well, if you boot into Linux, and do a sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/xda bs=512 count=1 as root (preface with 'sudo', if that is required by your install), it should absolutely work (remember to change the 'xda' I used into whatever device your drive shows up as, hda, sdb, what-not).

If you get an error, post it here.

EDIT: Saw you are using Ubuntu, so changed the command, and struck the extraneous comments.

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Exactly, I can read the disk in linux (Ubuntu 8.04) but cannot delete anything. It is totally unreadable/unmountable on my iBook. So I figured at least with my Ubuntu system I can get to it, so how to sledgehammer the damn thing?

So you can't format the drive under root? That's not right. Remember, at the hardware level, there are no permissions. You should be able to read or write anything on disk as root.

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Well, if you boot into Linux, and do a sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/xda bs=512 count=1

Be careful with this. If this won't work it's definitely hardware!

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Be careful with this.
Generally good advice when you "dd" right to your drive. Which is why I put "xda" instead of "sda", in case anyone (not necessarily Aaron, but any other member stumbling across this thread) pastes it into their terminal, it will fail and won't be destructive. ;)
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Sorry to not check back in. I followed the advice from the Mac thread and used the diskutil commands. I got it back, reformatted it this time in FAT, hopefully that will take care of it. Still not sure if the OSX is the issue corrupting it or it is hardware.

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