On Sat, 23 Apr 2005, Bruno Wolff III wrote: > > > If you don't care about deleting all the data, a much easier way > > > is: > > > > > > dd if=/dev/zero/ of=/dev/hda > > > > > > It will run for awhile (without a progress bar) and then stop. > > > Check the man pages if you want to check the progress of the > > > wipe. -ben > > > > I've tried the dd route, and while I didn't do a detailed test to see if > > everything was wiped bit-by-bit, I did find that the disk was completely > > unusable. I did this while performing some backup testing. When I was > > done, although the system was still running, there weren't any disk-based > > commands anymore! This likely will not meet official standards for "true" > > deletion of data (as shred tries to do) but it will go very far. > > It will write over all of the addressible blocks on the drive. You > won't have access to remapped sectors. You won't get rid of trace > magnetization that would allow someone to see what data was stored > on the drive in the past. Unless you have very high value > information on the drive this should be good enough. another solution is to boot from a CD and just rewrite the entire drive several times using "dd" -- enough times to wipe that trace magnetization. start with # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda ... now, it's too bad there's no /dev/ones. but you could also keep overwriting with /dev/random. after a while, i'm pretty sure there won't be much salvageable from the drive. rday
