Linux: Erase / wipe a device (disk, USB stick)

Here are some methods to erase a disk or other device. Before starting, you need to identify the device. You can find the deviceID using the command lsblk The following output shows a 1.9TB device at sdc so its deviceID is c

# lsblk
sda      8:0    0 953.9G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   512M  0 part
└─sda2   8:2    0 953.4G  0 part
sdb      8:16   0 119.2G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0   260M  0 part 
├─sdb2   8:18   0    16M  0 part 
├─sdb3   8:19   0 117.9G  0 part 
└─sdb4   8:20   0   1.1G  0 part 
sdc      8:32   1   1.9T  0 disk

Be very careful with these commands, if you get the wrong device you will wipe a device and never be able to recover it. There are no other warnings. The effect is immediate and irreversible!

Write zeros to the device

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc1 bs=512 status=progress

Write pseudo-random data

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdc bs=512 status=progress

Write very random data

openssl enc -aes-256-ctr -pass pass:"$(dd if=/dev/urandom bs=128 count=1 2>/dev/null | base64)" -nosalt < /dev/zero | pv -pterb -s $(sudo blockdev --getsize64 /dev/sdc) | sudo dd of=/dev/sdc bs=1M

Sources:

12 / 2021