wipe /dev/sda

[NoOp]

On 07/14/2009 06:55 AM, 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?
> 
> 

There was a rather interesting list discussion regarding this back in
2007. You can read it here:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.user/108933
[Wiping Out Data]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2007-March/109464.html
and picks up here for USB devices, but good discussion for hard drives
as well:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.user/109646
[again Wiping Out Data]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2007-March/110181.html
Also in that thread see:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.user/109692
[scrub]

Personally, I prefer to bcwipe (linux):
http://www.jetico.com/wiping-bcwipe/
but that's an expensive option for only wiping a single drive to sell on
eBay.