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From: Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Preparing a laptop for sale
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:51:35 +0100
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Joshua Murphy writes:

> A) To fill the drive with zeros:
>    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<drive>

Should be enough for practical purposes.

> B) And, to make it at least questionable whether you wiped it or
> merely had it encrypted:
>    dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/<drive>

Similar method, but faster: badblocks -t random -w /dev/<drive>
You can interrupt this after the first pass when the reading & comparing 
part starts.

	Wonko