Re: OT: Can Reformatting A Hard Drive To ext3 Destroy All the Data On It?

[Robert L Cochran]

On 05/29/2009 05:44 PM, Alan Cox wrote:
> > 'shred' is part of coreutils (i.e. installed by default).
> > Doing something like
> >
> > shred /dev/sdX
> >
> > as root will write various bit patterns 25 times over the entire drive
> > (see the man page for more options).
>
> Whoopeeedoo. Thats still not the correct way to erase a disk.
>
> Use security erase, that is why it is there.

Thanks very much to all who responded! I'm going to use Alan's 
suggestion first of all and if necessary a mixture of everyone else's. 
For good measure maybe I'll dump a pound or so of salt in a gallon of 
nice hot water and drop the hard drive in and wait for signs of rust to 
appear. Ha ha!

Thanks again!

Bob