Unable to wipe the hard drive.

[The Kestrel 0]

I have an Acer Aspire 1 laptop which I have no further use for. I wish to be able to hand it on and need to completely wipe the hard drive before passing it on. I am using Linux Cinnamon as my OS.

I have tried using scrub but the message "no rw access to dev/sda" comes up each time I try. With shred I get the message "failed to open for writing: Permission denied".

I am the only user on this laptop and have administrator privileges.

Can anyone help with this issue please?

[Shahriar Shovon 5]

3 hours ago, The Kestrel said:

I have an Acer Aspire 1 laptop which I have no further use for. I wish to be able to hand it on and need to completely wipe the hard drive before passing it on. I am using Linux Cinnamon as my OS.

I have tried using scrub but the message "no rw access to dev/sda" comes up each time I try. With shred I get the message "failed to open for writing: Permission denied".

I am the only user on this laptop and have administrator privileges.

Can anyone help with this issue please?

Hi Kestrel,

Are you running the scrub command with superuser privileges? Usually with sudo?

 

For example,

$ sudo <the-command-you-want-to-run>

 

Shovon

[The Kestrel 0]

Hi Shovon,

Thank you for your help. Your suggestion worked perfectly and scrub has now wiped my hard drive.

The Kestrel.

[Shahriar Shovon 5]

15 hours ago, The Kestrel said:

Hi Shovon,

Thank you for your help. Your suggestion worked perfectly and scrub has now wiped my hard drive.

The Kestrel.

That's great.

You're welcome. 

- Shovon