Inquiry:How to totally wipe out the entire hard drive
in [Debian]
|
Prev: On boot - firewall warning.......
Next: cisco vpnclient: not able to get shell output for more than a few lines
From: Ron Johnson on 6 Sep 2009 10:40 On 2009-09-06 07:10, John Hasler wrote: > H.Motamedi writes: >> Can you please let me know how can I totally wipe out the entire of my >> hard drive under Debian OS ? > > Depends on what you want to accomplish. If you merely want to make the > disk appear empty use fdisk to delete all the partitions. If you want > to destroy all the data for security purposes install and use shred. It > will take quite a while on a large disk. This really is a myth. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html From the Epilogue: For any modern PRML/EPRML drive, a few passes of random scrubbing is the best you can do. As the paper says, "A good scrubbing with random data will do about as well as can be expected". This was true in 1996, and is still true now. So, just run "dd if=/dev/urandom of=..." over it a couple of times. -- Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org
From: Osamu Aoki on 6 Sep 2009 11:20 On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 11:13:42AM +0100, hadi motamedi wrote: > Dear All > Can you please let me know how can I totally wipe out the entire of my > hard drive under Debian OS ? Thank you in advance http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch10.en.html#_erasing_an_entire_hard_disk 10.2.15. Erasing an entire hard disk There are several ways to completely erase data from an entire hard disk like device, e.g., USB memory stick at "/dev/sda". Caution: Check your USB memory stick location with mount(8) first before executing commands here. The device pointed by "/dev/sda" may be SCSI hard disk or serial-ATA hard disk where your entire system resides. Erase all the disk content by resetting data to 0 with the following. # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda Erase all by overwriting random data with the following. # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda Erase all by overwriting random data very efficiently with the following. # shred -v -n 1 /dev/sda Since dd(1) is available from the shell of many bootable Linux CDs such as Debian installer CD, you can erase your installed system completely by running an erase command from such media on the system hard disk, e.g., "/dev/hda", "/dev/sda", etc. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org
From: John Hasler on 6 Sep 2009 11:50 I wrote: > If you want to destroy all the data for security purposes install and > use shred. It will take quite a while on a large disk. Ron Johnson writes: > This really is a myth. What is? > So, just run "dd if=/dev/urandom of=..." over it a couple of times. man shred. That's essentially what shred does, but it is probably faster then dd. Note that you want to shred the device, not the files or partitions. In actual fact, overwriting with zeros once probably suffices for a modern drive (but there is the problem of bad blocks...) -- John Hasler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org
From: Andrew M.A. Cater on 6 Sep 2009 13:50 On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 11:13:42AM +0100, hadi motamedi wrote: > Dear All > Can you please let me know how can I totally wipe out the entire of my hard > drive under Debian OS ? > Thank you in advance > Regards > H.Motamedi If you want to wipe out a portion (say the contents of one home directory) - perhaps use shred. apt-get install shred ; shred /home/hmotamedi If you want to nuke the MBR partition table to reinstall an operating system dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=2 [or hda/hdb/sdb or whatever as appropriate for the particular device] If you want to wipe an entire drive dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda repeated a couple of times if necessary. Better, by far, is to get hold of a copy of DBAN [floppy image/CD image or even Windows .exe] Runs in memory, uses a Linux kernel to bootstrap a disk wipe program offering various options.] Using this, you can also securely delete hard drives before disposing of a machine / securely remove any pre-existing contents on any drives in a machine you acquire. It _will_ take a long time, almost certainly longer than you think, even if you only do write once with random, once with 1's once with 0's. All best, AndyC -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org
From: John Hasler on 6 Sep 2009 15:30
Andrew M.A. Cater writes: > If you want to wipe an entire drive > dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda Shred can wipe a drive. > repeated a couple of times if necessary. And it takes care of the repeats and is faster than dd. -- John Hasler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST(a)lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster(a)lists.debian.org |