[TriLUG] disk data destruction

[ALFRED JOHNSON]

I don't know whether there is a Linux program that will do this trick, 
but I would strongly recommend that you find a piece of software which 
will write "1's" or "0's" over the entire disk.
I used to have a Windows program (non-Microsoft) which would do this. 
Sorry I don't recall the name, but if you do that you should 
effectively destroy anything that's on the disk, without destroying the 
hard drive itself. As best as I can remember it was a piece of Macafee 
software which competed with Norton's collection of disk utilities. It 
was also faster than Norton as well.----Al  Johnson
===============================
On Tuesday, February 4, 2003, at 11:59 AM, Joseph Tate wrote:

> You can probably do better using dd: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hd* 
> bs=4096 for 4k nodes, 8192 for 8k nodes.  The cat command should work 
> though.
>
> Joseph
>
> Andrew Perrin wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> TriLUG mailing list
>>>>    http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
>>>> TriLUG Organizational FAQ:
>>>>    http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> TriLUG mailing list
>>>    http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
>>> TriLUG Organizational FAQ:
>>>    http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> TriLUG mailing list
>>    http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
>> TriLUG Organizational FAQ:
>>    http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> TriLUG mailing list
>    http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ:
>    http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html
>