Re: suplusing a disk, how to 'clean' up? Overwriting data?
On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 02:02:57PM -0500, Walter Tautz wrote:
> Please cc me on responses as I'm not on the list.
>
>
>
> Just wondering how one can accomplish cleaning
> up the disk? I.e. I want to overwrite
> the existing disk so that no information can
> be recovered. I've heard that dd has it's uses?
> Simply recreating file systems is not likely
> to be sufficient.
>
> walter
>
Don't use /dev/random .
The entropy pool in the kernel contains only 4096 bits,
when these are used up, /dev/random blocks. wipe is
a much better way to go, AND much faster than a blocked
file transfer.
The design premiss of wipe is that a thoughtfully designed
data sequence will remove the remanent magnetization in
the skirts of the tracks. Using one pass of /dev/random
leaves intelligible stuff in the skirts.
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
Reply to: