Re: Faster source of random numbers for blanking harddrives
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On 10/25/07 01:19, Bob wrote:
> if you type
> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null count=100000
> 100000+0 records in
> 100000+0 records out
> 51200000 bytes (51 MB) copied, 14.0076 seconds, 3.7 MB/s
>
> whereas
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null count=100000
> 100000+0 records in
> 100000+0 records out
> 51200000 bytes (51 MB) copied, 0.0932449 seconds, 549 MB/s
>
> Is there a faster source or random or pseudo-random numbers because at
> 4MB/s it'll take a loooong time to blank a 60GB drive let alone a 500GB
> job?
>
> Maybe we could use 10 (or 100) files on RAM disk each 1MB in size filled
> by /dev/urandom, then use /dev/random and some algorithm to determine
> what portion of what file to use, using random to string together chunks
> of pseudo-random files, you could also randomly replace/refill files,
> it's not ideal but it should be good enough and if we could get it fast
> enough so that it's the drive write speed that the bottle neck that
> would be perfect.
>
> What other options are there?
Why roll your own when there are *MANY* disk wipers out there.
Everything from srm & sfill in the secure-delete package, to wipe,
to dban.sourceforge.net.
- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA
Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!
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