[TriLUG] disk data destruction

[Andrew Perrin]

How about something like: (UNTESTED)

cat /dev/zero > /dev/hd*

where * is the appropriate device.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J Perrin - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin
Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
clists at perrin.socsci.unc.edu * andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu


On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Morris Walton wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am migrating/merging three old drives into one new one and will
> attempt to sell my old drives.  I want to destroy the data on the old
> drives more thoroughly than just doing a re-partition.  What utility
> would you recommend?
> 
> Thanks for the help!
> 
> Morris
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: trilug-admin at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-admin at trilug.org] On
> Behalf
> > Of Jon Carnes
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 10:56 AM
> > To: Triangle Linux Users Group
> > Subject: Re: [TriLUG] disk partitioning
> > 
> > Red Hat went the way of simplicity.  An experienced admin will
> partition
> > the disk themselves, and inexperienced user will simply not want to
> deal
> > with having separate volumes (or they will partition it themselves).
> > 
> > Kudo's to RedHat for making it easier on Newbies.
> > 
> > One big partition will not be slower, but it is less "secure".  As an
> > example, your "/tmp" directory is on the big "/" and that directory is
> > wide-open to being written to.  If someone with external access to
> your
> > box decides to hose you, they can simply write a ton of small file to
> > your "/tmp" directory.  This will eat up all the space on your drive
> as
> > well as all the inodes.
> > 
> > On a workstation that may not be a big deal to you - especially if you
> > don't run any daemon's like ftp or apache.  I recommend though that
> you
> > do have a separate /home directory (or a /backup directory).  At some
> > point in the lifespan of that hard drive you will want to upgrade the
> > distribution.  When that happens, you will find it easier to
> > install/backup if everything you want to preserve is in a separate
> > volume.
> > 
> > Good Luck - Jon Carnes
> > 
> > On Tue, 2003-02-04 at 10:34, Morris Walton wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I just installed RH8, using a new 120G hd.  I accepted the default
> > > partitioning scheme, which basically just uses /boot, /, and swap.
> "/"
> > > has the bulk of the space.  I was wondering if there is a shift in
> > > philosophy in using less partitions than before as I remember RH
> > > recommending more partitions in older versions.  Will the one big
> > > partition be slower?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Morris
> > 
> > 
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