On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 7:55 PM, JD <jd1008@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Well, you could always just perform a mostly secure wipe by just doing >> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdc >> several times, so that the bits are overwritten by random data. Indeed though there are two issues I thought would arise - a) This would not deal with HPA partitions unless I was mistaken? b) It is a lot slower than letting the drive firmware take over and overwrite all the bits on the disk > UCSD had released a paper a few years ago claiming that the > drive's own firmware can do the full erase. > The utility's name was HDDEraseWeb.zip I am aware of that but it is a DOS facility as far as I remember and I don't know if it can over-ride the bios freeze? hdparm is pure linux and that is why I wanted to go that route... > I do not know if it does or not - they did not release the > source code, which makes it completely untrustworthy. > For a university to release only the executable and not > the source code raises red flags. > > You can always resort to these linux tools: > scrub(1), shred(1), wipe(1) Yes, though much slower than the internal secure erase in the drive - and does not deal with HPA partitions (as I mentioned above) ? > > The key is to run the process with a high number of iterations. > > If the drive or partitions cannot be erased while booted, then > you can resort to booting from live CD and then run > > dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX (whatever you target disk X stands for). > > will wipe the whole drive. Of course you can choose a partition thereof. > > The key is you iterate the above about 10 times. > > Start when the disk is cold and has been lying un-powered. > > There is a very good reason for this. > > I leave it to you to figure that out why :) OK - I will try and figure that one out! -- mike c -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
