Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Preparing a laptop for sale

[Marcus Wanner <marcusw@cox.net>]

On 12/16/2009 2:24 PM, Mick wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 December 2009 18:49:07 Grant wrote:
>    
>> I'm about to sell my old laptop and I'd like to wipe out the data and
>> install any flavor of Linux via USB (the CD drive doesn't work any
>> more).  I've got a bootable USB key that will get me into Gentoo.  How
>> would you take it from there?  I'm looking for something quick and
>> easy.  My data isn't too sensitive, but I'd like to do some type of
>> wiping so it isn't all just sitting there with a deleted flag or
>> however that works.
>>      
> First I'd mount the partitions and then emerge/use shred:
>
> # shred -v -n 25 -z -u /mnt/a_partition
>
> Then I would delete old partitions, create new partitions and format them as
> required.  If you're really paranoid about your data (which from what you're
> telling me you're not) you can also use dd to randomly overwrite partition
> tables, but I would probably not bother.
>
> Now, there may be more modern tools to do all this with a single button, but I
> haven't looked into it in any detail.
>
> HTH.
>    
What's wrong with "dd if=/dev/zero of/dev/sdxx"?

Marcus