What's the best way to wipe a bad hard drive that won't mount correctly in Linux?

Question

I have a drive that I've had a lot of issues with for a while. I get some weird ATA errors when I try to boot, but sometimes it successfully boots and Linux reads the partition tables enough to know there are two partitions, but I can't actually view any of the data on the disk. I want to blow away the partition table and see if I can get some life out of it. I'm familiar with dban, but it appears to only have a .exe, which won't help me in Linux (I suppose I could try WINE). What utility should I use and how do I use it? I'm not a complete n00b, but I'm certainly no Linux expert either, so I'd appreciate as complete instructions as you can give. Thanks!

Answer 1

Download a DBAN ISO and mount it to a CD.

Make sure only the hard drive you want wiped is in your PC and start it up with the DBAN disc in and follow the instructions.

Make sure you have correct software on Linux to mount an ISO Image.

Answer 2

Download the GParted Partition Editor ISO http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ and create a bootable CD, using GParted you can completely wipe your Hard Drive by deleting all partitions and the result will show as unallocated.

LUg.