Re: [SLUG] Clean Hard Drive

From: Eben King (eben1@tampabay.rr.com)
Date: Wed Jul 20 2005 - 23:42:10 EDT


On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Branko wrote:

> I know this was discussed here before, but I'll ask anyway:
> What is a recommended program to clean (securely reformat) a hard drive
> on a 'puter before passing it on to someone else?
> I'm thinking in terms running a live CD (Knoppix, Ubuntu, etc) for that
> purpose. Or even a floppy run program.

How clean does it have to be? What are the resources at the recipient's
disposal? How much is your data worth to him/her? The DOD uses
incineration, degaussing, or shredding, IIRC; some people would be stymied
by simply removing /dev/hda1. It all depends.

Probably "cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda" suffices for most purposes. If that's
not enough, how about several repetitions of "cat /dev/random > /dev/hda"?

-- 
-eben    ebQenW1@EtaRmpTabYayU.rIr.OcoPm    home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar
LEO:  Now is not a good time to photocopy your butt and staple
it to your boss' face, oh no.  Eat a bucket of tuna-flavored pudding
and wash it down with a gallon of strawberry Quik.  -- Weird Al

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