Wiping donated computers for recycling question

[Jonathan D. Proulx]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 09:07:12PM +0100, Theo Schmidt wrote:

:The solution is simple: from the live DVD do something like: "dd if=/dev/zero 
:of=/dev/sda" (Maybe somebody can verify that this is correct.) This will write 
:zeros onto the entire disk 

It will do as you say using:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda

is better as it will write random data which makes recovery that much
harder.  The "secure" wisdom is to do this three times to prevent
software attacks and atleast make hardware attacks (like paying alot
of money to a discrecovery specialist) really expensive.

But for me if you're talking about reinstalling a class room computer
then using that in another classroom setting this is overkill, infact
nomatter what was on it if the end use is in a supervised class room
the  reinstall is likely fine.   If you are passing the computer out
of your controll more paranoia may or may not be appropriate, your
call.

-Jon