[ubuntu-uk] Securely delete data

Tyler J. Wagner tyler at tolaris.com
Fri Nov 16 17:00:57 UTC 2012


On 2012-11-16 15:36, Gordon Burgess-Parker wrote:
> On 16/11/12 14:55, Alan Pope wrote:
>> but then discovered dd'ing zeroes over it from a live CD was sufficient,
>> so I just do that from a live CD/USB now.
> 
> Can you expand on that for a newbie?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

You might use "bs=1M" or some other value if you think certain block sizes
improve efficiency.

Alan, the above is exactly what happens if you do this:

shred -v -n 1 -z /dev/sda

Only with shred you get useful progress output, and can optionally do more
passes with more secure data. shred is part of coreutils and is included on
all Ubuntu Live CDs.

Regards,
Tyler

-- 
"It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists
and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so."
   -- Ernestine Rose



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