On 12/16/2009 2:24 PM, Mick wrote:
On Wednesday 16 December 2009 18:49:07 Grant wrote:
I'm about to sell my old laptop and I'd like to wipe out the data and
install any flavor of Linux via USB (the CD drive doesn't work any
more). I've got a bootable USB key that will get me into Gentoo. How
would you take it from there? I'm looking for something quick and
easy. My data isn't too sensitive, but I'd like to do some type of
wiping so it isn't all just sitting there with a deleted flag or
however that works.
First I'd mount the partitions and then emerge/use shred:
# shred -v -n 25 -z -u /mnt/a_partition
Then I would delete old partitions, create new partitions and format them as
required. If you're really paranoid about your data (which from what you're
telling me you're not) you can also use dd to randomly overwrite partition
tables, but I would probably not bother.
Now, there may be more modern tools to do all this with a single button, but I
haven't looked into it in any detail.
HTH.
What's wrong with "dd if=/dev/zero of/dev/sdxx"?
Marcus
