Reformat USB stick with a CD ISO9660 FS

[Owen Townend]

On 12/06/2008, Daniel Mons <daniel.mons at iinet.net.au> wrote:
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>
>  Bevin Watson wrote:
>  > delete the files from it.  It seems the simplest thing is to just
>  > reformat the whole device.  However, I'm getting a little out of my
>  > league thinking about partitions versus the whole device.  fdisk etc.
>  > seem to be partition-based.  Should I just "dd" all over it?
>  > nb: The USB stick shows up as /dev/scd1 (ISO 9660) and /dev/sdd1 (vfat)
>
>
> I'd zero the device with dd.   Find out the device using "sudo fdisk -l"
>  to print out all partitions and physical devices.  If it turns up as
>  /dev/sdd, for example, use the following dd command to wipe it:
>
>  sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd
>

This is overkill here, there is no inherant security or other risk in
leaving the data unscrubbed. This should be sufficient:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd bs=512 count=1

This will wipe the partition table. You can then use gparted, fdisk,
cfdisk etc to add partitions back in.
This is of course providing that there are no hardware limitations on
removing the cd image partition.

[snip]
>
>  On a semi-related note, those who want to securely wipe hard disks can
>  use a similar method with alternating passes of /dev/zero and
>  /dev/urandom.  I do this as standard when decomissioning desktops and
>  laptops if they are to be donated, re-imaged, or eBay'ed somewhere.
>  Servers and machines carrying highly sensitive data get a more severe
>  dose of DoD 5220.22-M via "Darik's Boot and Nuke" (Google it for details).
>
>  - -Dan

  The few times I have had to securely destroy data for customers have
been situations where the data is much more valuable than the hardware
itself. This opens opportunities for physical destruction.

cheers,
Owen.