[TriLUG] disk data destruction

[Chris Hedemark]

To further remove any latent signatures from the disk, I'd probably
alternate between /dev/zero and /dev/urandom, making several passes.  Also
I would use dd instead of cat.
> 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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