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

Code:

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shred -fuvz -n 3 /dev/sda1

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substituting your target disk or partition of course.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ms. Daisy

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.

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Hi!

What would be the terminal commands?

KegHead

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.

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

Hi!

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

Thanks!

KegHead

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Soul-Sing

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

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+1. I used dd instead of dban the last time I did it cuz I couldn't get dban to boot.

Code:

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sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by KegHead

Hi!

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

Thanks!

KegHead

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See here:
http://superuser.com/questions/19326...space-in-linux

Wow!

Great info!

KegHead

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.