Wiping Out Data

[Øyvind Stegard]

2007-03-16 fre 09:57 +0200, Amichai Rotman:
> Hello All,
> 
> I have a bunch of Hard disks I would like to donate. I would like to
> completely wipe out the date from the Hard disks so I can calmly
> donate the disks without worrying other people will be able to read my
> data. 
> 
> I am looking for an app to completely wipe out the data (kinda walking
> 1s and 0s)....
> 
> Any such app any of you can recommend?
> 
> Thanks!
You could always use `dd' (as root) if you're command-line comfortable.
This command is available in most Linux environments, including
live-CDs, etc. It will work with any harddrive/controller that the
running linux kernel has a working driver for.

$ man dd
$ dd bs=32768 if=/dev/zero oflag=direct of=/dev/[disk-device]

Replace [disk-device] with whatever disk you want erased. This will also
wipe all partitions (including the partition-table itself) if you
specify the disk device without a parition number, for instance
'/dev/hdb' or '/dev/sdc'. Remember to un-mount any mounted file-systems
on the disk first ;).

If you're somewhat paranoid you could use 'if=/dev/urandom' which will
fill the disk with (semi-)random garbage instead of just zeroes (but
this will probably be slower, depending on CPU & HD). I believe multiple
complete passes of random data "cleaning" would make it quite hard to
recover the original data.

BE CAREFUL with this command, as it has every potential to destroy any
disk device or partition/filesystem you give to it with of=/dev/... 

Øyvind
-- 
< Øyvind Stegard < oyvinst at ifi uio no >
 < http://www.oyvind.nu/