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Thread: Shred or wipe an old hard drive?

  1. #1
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    Shred or wipe an old hard drive?

    Hi!

    I'm recycling my old 140 gb hd.

    I want to completely wipe the data off.

    Which is better;

    Wipe or shred

    or something else?

    Thanks!

    KegHead

  2. #2
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    Code:
    shred -fuvz -n 3 /dev/sda1
    substituting your target disk or partition of course.
    Please mark completed threads as [SOLVED], which lets us find solutions faster!

  3. #3
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    Unless you work for the NSA, the quick mode of wipe would be more than sufficient.

    I haven't used shred but it seems from the man page that it's designed to erase files more than the whole system (although it has options to do the whole disk). Make sure to read the man page if use shred.

    dd would be effective by writing 0s or random 1s and 0s over the whole disk.
    Last edited by Ms. Daisy; March 1st, 2013 at 08:09 PM.

  4. #4
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ms. Daisy View Post
    Unless you work for the NSA, the quick mode of wipe would be more than sufficient.

    I haven't used shred but it seems from the man page that it's designed to erase files more than the whole system (although it has options to do the whole disk). Make sure to read the man page if use shred.

    dd would be effective by writing 0s or random 1s and 0s over the whole disk.
    Hi!

    What would be the terminal commands?

    KegHead

  5. #5
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    Ideally you want to issue the commands from a live CD, not from the disk that you're erasing (in case you weren't aware).

    also I would recommend ensuring that you don't have any external / additional hard drives attached or mounted to prevent erasing the wrong disk.

    I'm on my phone right now and would just Google the commands, I suppose you could probably do that just as well as I could.

    If you want to post the commands here to ensure you've got the right ones before executing them, that would be prudent.

  6. #6
    Soul-Sing is offline Chocolate-Covered Ubuntu Beans
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    wipe is more timeconsuming. If its your entire harddisk: -> dban

  7. #7
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    Hi!

    Is it possible to wipe/shred just unused space via terminal?

    Thanks!

    KegHead

  8. #8
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    Quote Originally Posted by Soul-Sing View Post
    wipe is more timeconsuming. If its your entire harddisk: -> dban
    +1. I used dd instead of dban the last time I did it cuz I couldn't get dban to boot.

    Code:
    sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=1M
    Quote Originally Posted by KegHead View Post
    Hi!

    Is it possible to wipe/shred just unused space via terminal?

    Thanks!

    KegHead
    See here:
    http://superuser.com/questions/19326...space-in-linux
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  9. #9
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    Wow!

    Great info!

    KegHead

  10. #10
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    Re: Shred or wipe?

    Excellent advice about doing it from a live install and disconnect everything but the target disk. These procedures are not recoverable by mere mortals, or even minor deities, I'd guess.

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