[UFO Chicago] recommendations for completely erasing a hard drive?

[Jesse Becker]

--- Brian Sobolak <brian at planetshwoop.com> wrote:

> Charles Marshall wrote:
> > Brian,
> > Boot into a Knoppix cd, then:
> > 
> >     cat /dev/zero > /dev/[s|h]d[a|b|c|d]
> > 
> > Haven't done it in a while, but I think that worked
> when I had to do it.
> 
> Hmm.  That would certainly work, but I seem to recall a
> tool that did 5 
> passes (all 1s, then all 0s, etc.) to make sure it was
> erased.  Does 
> that ring a bell?

The incantation above is a bad idea.  Yes, it will nuke the
data, but a large portion of that data is probably
retrievable.  At least use random data, and dd is faster
than cat:

  dd if=/dev/random bs=4k of=/dev/[sh]d[a-f]

However, to answer your origianl question:  you want DBAN.
  http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Alternately, there is a program called BCWIPE: 
http://www.jetico.com/  The *only* reason that I mention
this program is because it recommended for use at several
government agencies.  Use or avoid, depending on your
paranoia level.



--
Jesse Becker
GPG-fingerprint:  BD00 7AA4 4483 AFCC 82D0  2720 0083 0931 9A2B 06A2


 
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