I have a hard drive previously used with a Linux system, with an ext4 filesystem. I would like now to zero out the hard drive from a Windows system.
I understand I can do this using the FORMAT
command, passing in /p:0
(or another number for multiple passes); as the documentation for /p
says:
/P:
<count> -- Zero every sector on the volume. After that, the volume will be overwritten count times using a different random number each time. If count is zero, no additional overwrites are made after zeroing every sector.
However, the hard drive doesn't have an assigned drive letter, because Windows doesn't natively support ext4.
How can I refer to the drive in the FORMAT
command when it doesn't have a drive letter?
I can get the object ID using MOUNTVOL
or Powershell Get-Volume
, but I can't pass that object ID into FORMAT
. The following command:
FORMAT \\?\Volume{8ab24395-0965-40fc-8cc8-bb7536c9e1dd}\ /fs:ntfs /p:1
returns:
The given volume name does not have a mount point or drive letter.
I am running Windows 10 (non-Insiders), and I do not have WSL installed.