Cinnamon app to erase a windows drive C? [SOLVED]

[wallyUSA]

I need to erase a win10 c drive on another PC. Is there an app in Cinnamon (booting from USB) that I can use to erase everything on c: ? This is for a friend who uses Windows.
Tx

[WharfRat]

Why not just use sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress

Make sure /dev/sda is the correct block device.

[wallyUSA]

Why not just use sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress

Make sure /dev/sda is the correct block device.

Not sure I understand this. I have little experience with CLI.
If I boot his Windows (only) machine w/ Cinnamon on USB, will the /dev/xxx info show up? How to display it?
He has no interest in Linux, just trying to erase his HDD for him.

It will be some time before I can try your example, just thought I'd ask the question while I am waiting.

TX

[WharfRat]

If there is only one HDD then it will be /dev/sda

You can run sudo blkid to see its partitions and/or sudo fdisk -l

Take a look at http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_wip ... n_in_Linux

[karlchen]

Hello, wallyUSA.

Every Linux Mint live system comes with the graphical application gparted. gparted can be used to create, modify or delete disk partitions.
As WharfRat mentioned you will have to make sure that you identify the right disk device on the Windows machine, because "drive C:" is a Windows term. In gparted it will very likely be some /dev/<devicename>.
Cf. gparted

HTH,
Karl

[wallyUSA]

Thanks guys, this is probably all I need. Link was very informative.
Wally

[DAMIEN1307]

hi folks...lets see if im reading this correctly...wallyusa says "I need to erase a win10 c drive on another PC"...it belongs to wallys friend...wally says "If I boot his Windows (only) machine w/ Cinnamon on USB, will the /dev/xxx info show up? How to display it?
He has no interest in Linux, just trying to erase his HDD for him."...if im reading this correctly, this would mean that his friends computer is WINDOWS ONLY installed on his harddrive...wally wants to erase his friends windows hdd so its a clean hardrive with nothing on it since his friend does not want linux at this time...just a blank disk for now...now i see it asked to run 2 commands on this windows only computer..."sudo blkid" and "sudo fdisk -l"...the code given to wally to erase a windows operating system on a harddrive with only windows on it is..."sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress"...if i read this correctly than is it really possible that linux sudo commands for linux terminal will actually work on a windows only formatted hardrive?...i understand gparted for this operation but not these linux commands for the linux terminal...did i miss something?...if so, "mia culpa mia culpa"...thats a new one on me, but hey, i can be taught...DAMIEN

[MrEen]

hi folks...lets see if im reading this correctly...wallyusa says "I need to erase a win10 c drive on another PC"...it belongs to wallys friend...wally says "If I boot his Windows (only) machine w/ Cinnamon on USB, will the /dev/xxx info show up? How to display it?
He has no interest in Linux, just trying to erase his HDD for him."...if im reading this correctly, this would mean that his friends computer is WINDOWS ONLY installed on his harddrive...wally wants to erase his friends windows hdd so its a clean hardrive with nothing on it since his friend does not want linux at this time...just a blank disk for now...now i see it asked to run 2 commands on this windows only computer..."sudo blkid" and "sudo fdisk -l"...the code given to wally to erase a windows operating system on a harddrive with only windows on it is..."sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress"...if i read this correctly than is it really possible that linux sudo commands for linux terminal will actually work on a windows only formatted hardrive?...i understand gparted for this operation but not these linux commands for the linux terminal...did i miss something?...if so, "mia culpa mia culpa"...thats a new one on me, but hey, i can be taught...DAMIEN

Get it now?

[powerwagon75]

Dban would certainly work as well, if just looking to wipe the HD of Windows and it's structure. Download .iso and put on a properly formatted USB stick.

https://dban.org/