Wipe the first 1GB # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=1024 Wipe the last 1MB Some RAID configuration data might be present at the end of the disk, thus existing the need to delete this data, before reusing the disk # dd bs=1M if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX count=1024 seek=$((`blockdev –getsz /dev/sdX` – 1024))