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  • Berend Tober btober at seaworthysys.com
    Thu Oct 5 08:17:46 EDT 2006

     

    I found this simple suggestion via Googling on techniques for scrubbing 
    hard drives prior to disposal:
    
    dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hdb && dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb
    
    (repeated in a for-do loop several times)
    
    This seems simple and inexpensive, but I was wondering about a couple 
    things. Specifically:
    
    How does it know how much data to write or when to stop?
    
    Anyone have experience or comments regarding the effectiveness of this 
    technique?
    
    I imagine it could require some time, too.
    
    
    I also read a little about the standard shred utility, but there seemed 
    to be some cavea  related to ext3 file systems.
    
    -- BMT
    
    
    

     

     

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