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Accepted
Paul
Asked: 2016-07-01 08:32:25 +0800 CST

How can I quickly clear GPT partition data from a disk?

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I want to do a quick "wipe" of some disks so they look like they're ready to be newly partitioned. Currently there is a GPT partition type on disk, which seems to write some data both at the beginning and end of the disk. In this case, it doesn't matter if the data on the disk is wiped, so no need to wait for the whole disk to dd from /dev/zero. So what's a simple way to clear just the beginning and end GPT headers?

In this case, I'm using Linux (CentOS 7) with standard SATA disks (/dev/sda, etc.)

linux gpt

3 Answers

  1. gdisk has an option for it. Open extended options, choose 'zap':

    gdisk /dev/sda
> x
> z
> w (maybe?)
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  2. Best Answer

    This should do it pretty efficiently, based on the information about GPT on this site.

    Clear the first block (two 512-byte sectors for MBR and header, and 16KiB for partition entries):

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdwhatever bs=512 count=34

    The last part is trickier. I'm borrowing from this question to assist, although if you have ddrescue handy, it can go in reverse.

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdwhatever bs=512 count=34 seek=$((`blockdev --getsz /dev/sda` - 34))
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  3. FreeBSD utility gpart can do it in this pretty straightforward way:

    gpart destroy -F /dev/sdX
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