wipe /dev/sda

[Ray Leventhal]

NoOp wrote:
> On 07/14/2009 06:55 AM, Gregg Hastings wrote:
<snip>
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
@NoOp

The bcwipe statements, while true, are outdated in the extreme...imnsho, 
overkill galore as well.

I do consulting with a data recovery company...they're big into the data 
eradication business as well.  In the US, NIST (National Institutes of 
Standards and Technology) have set the standard for government and 
private data eradication methods by defining 'purge' and 'clear' in SP 
800-88 [1].

Compliance with the NIST 800-88 'purge' criteria is as simple as a 
single pass using Security Erase and is, from what they tell me, 
entirely non-recoverable.

If you're hardcore into truly eradicating data and need to give, donate, 
sell or re-deploy drives, this company makes hardware to do that, in the 
US$5K range

This isn't meant to be spam, so I'm not going to advertise them...if 
anyone's interested email me off-list and I'll be happy to supply links.

Anyway...Gutman, outdated  U.S. DoD 5220.22-M and others are really 
overkill, according to these guys.

YMMV, but I HTH,
-Ray

[1] http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf