If you are truly paranoid use DBAN, which is short for Darin's Boot and
Nuke. IMO it is the best disk wiping tool out there. It gives you a
couple different wiping methods to choose from, including the one used
by the US DoD. You can also specify how many passes it makes.
According to the website, DBAN is used by the US Dept of Energy and the
National Nuclear Security Administration, which ain't bad. Be aware
that it may take an entire day to run depending on which wipe method you
choose. I called it good after around 8 hours, and I was only on pass
5/7 on an 80GB disk! It has a quick wipe option if you don't want to
wait forever or aren't insanely paranoid.
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
- Matt
Shane J Pearson wrote:
Hi Anthony,
On 01/06/2005, at 4:01 PM, Anthony Roberts wrote:
The 'dd' way is good enough unless someone is willing to to tear the
drive apart in a lab.
I think this depends on how you use dd though. If you just do a single
pass of zeroes, but fear someone will mount a multi million dollar
electron microscope forensic analysis, then yeah, that might not be
enough. But write from /dev/urandom with dd multiple times to the disk
and you should be okay even with that extreme case.
If I were worried about open-drive analysis of the drive I want to
clean, then I'd be physically destroying the drive also. Put it in a
kiln, get the oxy torch into it, etc.
