From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1ELS00-0007dd-A8 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Fri, 30 Sep 2005 21:00:56 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.5/8.13.5) with SMTP id j8UKpUn8009718; Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:51:30 GMT Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [134.68.220.30]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.5/8.13.5) with ESMTP id j8UKjT5i004989 for ; Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:45:29 GMT Received: from main.gmane.org ([80.91.229.2] helo=ciao.gmane.org) by smtp.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1ELRsP-0008NS-7U for gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:53:05 +0000 Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1ELRqi-0004qz-J7 for gentoo-user@gentoo.org; Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:51:20 +0200 Received: from dhcp-83-219-102-169.customers.tvtnet.ch ([83.219.102.169]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:51:20 +0200 Received: from remy.blank_asps by dhcp-83-219-102-169.customers.tvtnet.ch with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:51:20 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org From: Remy Blank Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: Good command for wiping a hard drive? Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:50:30 +0200 Message-ID: References: <5bdc1c8b0509301334n7aff4434j449f085a4a4e8336@mail.gmail.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: dhcp-83-219-102-169.customers.tvtnet.ch User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20050817) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: <5bdc1c8b0509301334n7aff4434j449f085a4a4e8336@mail.gmail.com> Sender: news X-Archives-Salt: 86017c9a-7f3d-48aa-b3a7-96c3fa72a4ef X-Archives-Hash: 9af8c74a0f8b8e272eec047dc911ff47 Mark Knecht wrote: > Sold my laptop on Ebay. It was dual boot Gentoo/XP Pro and had > financial data on it. I'd like to pretty securely wipe the drive > before shipping. I've already deleted all 10 partitions and written > new partitions on which are different sizes and different file > systems. What simple command can Ido to write data to the whole drive? Assuming your hard disk is /dev/hda, I'd do: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=8M Then go have a coffee. If you want it more secure, go for this, a few times in a row (at least 7, I read): dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda bs=8M However, this will take a *long* time, as /dev/urandom is quite slow. But it will make the data unrecoverable even with expensive means. -- Remy Remove underscore and suffix in reply address for a timely response. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list