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is there an app that can do this? Trying to simulate dban without actually using dban.

I know I can dd but is it safe to run dd on multiple instances of the terminal? Thanks

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  • What is your definition of "at the same time"? Both answers are using a sequential method; that is not "at the same time".
    – Rinzwind
    Apr 9, 2019 at 10:59

2 Answers 2

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I dont know what is your favourite way of formatting disks, I would go with mkfs. The following method/trick will work with other commands as well:

You can use GNU parallel.

Suppose you would like to format

/dev/sda1 which is ext4 partition,
/dev/sda2 which is ntfs partition,
/dev/sdb5 which is etx3 partition,
/dev/sdf1 which is ext4 partition

You can create a text file (say input.txt) with commandline options for mkfs, e.g.:

-t ext4 /dev/sda1
-t ntfs /dev/sda2
-t ext3 /dev/sdb5
-t ext4 /dev/sdf1

Then run

parallel -a input.txt mkfs

If you would like to pass different parameters to an individual partition (e.g. partition label or other options), you can add them to the corresponding line.

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It's safe to run multiple instances of dd wiping different devices. You could also get a speed up in total time needed to wipe different devices.
If wiping on single device, but like two partitions - then run dd for one then another.

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