[ale] erasing a hard drive

Greg Clifton gccfof5 at gmail.com
Fri Aug 26 14:42:09 EDT 2011


I remember a post by Greg Freemeyer stating that there was no reported case
of recoverable data from a 40GB hard drive that had been written erased with
all zeros. I would take that to mean some value of "modern" not > ~ 8 years
old.

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:37 PM, Lightner, Jeff <JLightner at water.com> wrote:

> Of course you don't need a software at all.
>
> Erasing the data in a filesystem then unmounting the filesystem and
> running:
> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda1/scramble bs=1M
>
> - will write random data on the partition (sda1 in the above - you can
> substitute other partitions/drive letters as necessary)
>
> However, any time I've seen this question come up someone invariably posts
> that it really isn't necessary for "modern drives".   They never quite say
> what their definition of "modern" is.
>
> In the past it was required to do something like the above multiple times
> but it really isn't necessary unless you're doing DOD or CIA work.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Pete
> Hardie
> Sent: Friday, August 26, 2011 10:52 AM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] erasing a hard drive
>
> Thermite!
>
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 10:37, Robert <rs at ale.spam.futz.org> wrote:
> >>I've drawn a blank.  What is the name of that free software that I can
> >>use to erase a hard drive?  It will run multiple overwrites?
> >>
> >>I've got a number of old drives I need to dispose of and I don't want to
> >>bother trying to figure out what's on them.
> >>
> >
> > shred?
> >
> > --
> > Arguing with an Engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud.
> > After a while you realize the pig is enjoying it.
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>
>
>
> --
> Pete Hardie
> --------
> Better Living Through Bitmaps
>
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