How to make sure it's really gone?

[Clayton Stapleton]

Here is a line I use to zero a partition:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb1 bs=1024

That does a good job for me. I got this from "Running Linux"
and it does a good job. and only that partition is affected.

Clay

> -----Original Message-----
> From: technomage-hawke at cox.net
> Sent: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 17:50:37 -0700
> To: plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: Re: How to make sure it's really gone?
> 
> badblocks is useful for this (someone else a long time ago posted a
> command
> line for badblocks that would make data on the drive truly
> non-recoverable).
> 
> here's the command line I used:
> 
> badblocks -f -t random -p 30 -sv -w /dev/<device>
> 
> this command will take a very long time to run on any of the large >10 GB
> drives BUT, it will insure that no usable data of any kind remains
> afterward
> (even the NSA would have a heart attack on this).
> 
> my scenario for a full wipe involves this:
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<device> && dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/<device>
> &&
> badblocks -f -t random -p 30 -sv -w /dev/<device>
> 
> that can be placed in a script and run as many times as you see fit.
> However,
> with 30 passes in the badblocks in -w mode, you can pretty much be
> assured
> that no data will exist afterward.
> 
> more comments?
> 
> 
> On Saturday 21 October 2006 17:24, Jim wrote:
>> Let's assume I have some data on a Dreiser's or ext3 partition.  Short
>> of removing the drive and smashing it, how can I make sure with
>> reasonable certainty the data is gone?
>> 
>> I looked at the manage for shred and it says it doesn't work on
>> journaled file systems such as ReiserFS, Ext3 and others.  Is there
>> something that will do the job on an ext3 or reiserfs partition?
>> 
>> Thanks
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