wipe /dev/sda

[Fred Roller]

On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 09:55 -0400, Gregg Hastings 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?
> 
> 

I agree with the others.  As I am to understand a pass of 
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda
then a pass of 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
and one more of random is supposed to be sufficient data wipe for the
average user.  Anything beyond that should consider just destroying the
disk.  By the time you use it to run an os and daily use, unless someone
gets the drive in under 7 days, you will write over and continue to
mangle the shadows.
  
-- 
Fred R.
www.fwrgallery.com

"Life is like Linux, simple.  If you are fighting it, you are doing
something wrong."