There's a lot of ways to do it, but they all do the same thing.
In bash:
$~ shred -zn10 /dev/sda

That'll securely erase everything on block device /dev/sda--give it a while
to run as it's writing random numbers across the entire drive and then
finishing by writing nothing but 0s on it.  This makes all data on the
device non-recoverable.

You need to overwrite the data anywhere from 4 - 15 times before it's clean
and nothing can be recovered from it.

That's essentially all dban/wipe is doing.  If you want to get even more
primitive, then you can use dd (garunteed to be on all *nix systems)
$~  dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda && dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

That's the same as doing one pass, but if shred is there (and it usually
is) then it'll do all 10 passes for you.  I guess you could just throw that
dd command in a simple loop:
$~  for i in `seq 10` ; do dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda && dd if=/dev/zero
of=/dev/sda ; done


Dban or wipe will do all this for you, but you can do it yourself.
(Note, don't do it on the currently-running OS drive, because it'll
eventually erase glibc.so being used to do the overwrite.  If you want to
do it on multiple drives, just plug them all into the same computer, and
run shred on all of them from a live-cd of your chosing)



On Sun, Dec 14, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Stephen M <smelheim85@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> HI,
>
> I have a couple drives that I want to wipe and give them to the Loco
> group.  I have never done a wipe on my own computer.  I want to see whats
> the best method.  I know there is dban, wipe, and many other solutions.  I
> will be using a SATA to USB adapter so I don't have to open my computers
>
> What I need to know is there a way to use that device and still work on my
> computer.  Or do I have to let my computer run dban or whatever to wipe the
> drive.
>
> Thanks all.
>
> --
> Stephen Melheim
> 602-400-7707
> SMelheim85@gmail.com
>
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-- 
Todd Millecam