On 2010-03-06 03:07, Osamu Aoki wrote:
Hi, On Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 10:44:30PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:On 2010-03-05 22:14, Mark wrote:On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Jochen Schulz <ml@well-adjusted.de> wrote:Why do you think you need to blank the partition before installing lenny? There *are* reasons to do that, but they have nothing to do with the installation of a new OS.Just a habit I've acquired over the years - I like to have the hdd blanked with zeros to ensure there are no ghost/residual files left on any of the sectors before installing anything.That's *completely* and *utterly* nonsensical. mkfs wipes over the existing file structures.Really? If you really wish to erase data, that seems moderately safeaction to do for me.See:
[snip]
As I understand, if you have sensitive data on harddisk, just doing mkfs only is not enough to erase them all. It overwrites very small portion of them. It certainly makes almost impossible to read them by most of us with limited time. Doing dd is one step more safe. ...
It's one thing to be concerned that They might be able to partially reconstruct sensitive data from unwritten-over sectors, and yet another to be worried about "ghost/residual files".
Maybe he just incorrectly worded his concerns, but there *is* IMNSHO a significant difference between the two scenarios.
-- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA "If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us arms." Mike Ditka