wipe /dev/sda

[Gregg Hastings]

Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 6:55 AM, Gregg Hastings<a47496 at tyldd.com> wrote:
>> I have a disk I'm getting rid of via eBay.  For whatever reason I can't
>> get DBAN to load on that laptop.  I was thinking about doing dd
>> if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda from knoppix but then I ran across wipe.
>>
>> After looking over the man page I can't decided which, if any, options
>> to include with wipe /dev/sda.
>>
>> Can anyone point me in the right direction?  From what I read it will be
>> doing a 34 pass wipe by default with no options present.  Which is fine
>> for the information the disk used to hold.  Nothing overly sensitive.
>>
>> Experiences?
> 
> What threat do you envision?  Spies spending a year recovering bits
> from your disk?
> 
> I've always been content with coping /dev/zero onto the whole disk or
> partition.  Now that I've learned from you about /dev/urandom, I'll
> use that.
> 
> I use a cross-cut shredder on all my trash that has dollar amounts or
> account numbers, and still consider that to be a greater vulnerability
> than a drive that's been wiped with /dev/zero.  One could get useful
> information with merely a hundred hours or so of low-tech jigsawing.
> But I really don't think that's going to happen unless some reader
> takes this up as a challenge.
> 
> You've got to draw the line somewhere, and the choice is a bit
> arbitrary.  I'm not going to pour cement or acid into my shredder
> bags, and I'm not going to do 34 passes on a dead drive.
> 
> YMMV.
> 


Well good point.  I just saw that 34 was the default.  DBAN I believe
does 7.  I have the time, the the auction is over in 5 days.  So for all
I care it could write random data to the drive until I need to walk out
the door to ship the unit.