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