[ubuntu-uk] mbr

[scoundrel50a]

On 28/01/12 16:27, Ted Wager wrote:
> On Sat, 2012-01-28 at 14:46 +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 10:41:36AM +0000, Ted Wager wrote:
>>> I used gparted to blank a couple of hdd's that I am getting rid of
>>> however the mbrr was not formatted and they still boot from grub.
>>> Anyone tell me how I format the drive so it is completely blank ?
>> Ah, the old "how do I securely erase a drive" chestnut. :) People
>> are often keen to go into a lot of detail about the ingenious
>> methods they use to overwrite data, destroy drives, etc. etc.
>> because clearly the security of their data is of immense importance
>> and you just can't be sure, right?
>>
>> For all practical purposes, overwriting the entire disk just once
>> with something like dd, e.g.:
>>
>>      $ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M
>>
>> will render it unrecoverable. No data recovery company will promise
>> to be able to get any data whatsoever off of that. This is the
>> quickest way to achieve what you want while still ending up with a
>> working drive. If someone thinks they can get any data off of that,
>> they should be asked why they aren't in the commercial data recovery
>> business, since they apparently know how to do it better than anyone
>> else who is. :)
>>
>> In theory there may be data left in inaccessible areas of the drive,
>> such as the spare sectors that the manufacturer included.  In theory
>> an entity with a vast amount of resources may be able to take your
>> drive apart in a lab and use minute differences in magnetic field to
>> guess at what was written before the single pass of data was written
>> over the top by dd.
>>
>> If that is a realistic risk for you¹, then you may want to retire to
>> your island stronghold and instruct a henchman to run Darik's boot
>> and nuke (DBAN). This may take a day or more, especially if you use
>> one of the more thorough modes.
>>
>> If you need quick and don't care about the drive working afterwards,
>> melt the platters to liquid or grind them down to dust.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Andy
>>
>>

What is so wrong about wanting to be able to securely wipe an 
hdd.........and why do people feel the need to be so condescending when 
somebody asks about it.......trying to make the person asking look 
guilty......funny thing, you seem to know how to do it, even with the 
attitude......