[NTLUG:Discuss] Formatting hard drive

[Cameron, Thomas]

You can even start a Red Hat installation with the "linux rescue" argument and it will dump you to a shell.  Then do:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

and it will overwrite the whole drive with zeros.  That makes it *very* difficult to recover data without very expensive technology and lots of time.  If you're really going to go overboard, do the dd dance seven or eight times.  At that point it's practically impossible to recover any data from the drive unless you're one of those three-letter government organizations (FBI, NSA, CIA, etc.).

--
Thomas Cameron, RHCE, CNE, MCSE, MCT
Assistant Vice President
Linux Design and Engineering
Bank of America
(972) 997-9641

The opinions expressed in this message are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer, Bank of America. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick R. Michaud [mailto:pmichaud at pobox.com]
> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2003 1:36 PM
> To: NTLUG Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Formatting hard drive
> 
> 
> A quick Google search came for "clean hard drive dd" came
> up with "DiskZapper" -- a freeware utility for wiping hard
> drives to binary zero from a boot floppy or CD.  It's described at 
> http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Software/519960/Diskzapper.html ,
> or do a Google search for "diskzapper".
> 
> Personally I've often used the dd(1) command to wipe hard drives;
> I'll boot with the RH install disks but abort the installation after
> a shell prompt is available on an alternate console (Shift+Alt+F3,
> I think), then I run a command similar to
> 
>    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1
> 
> to fill /dev/hda1 with binary zeroes.  One could probably add bs= and
> count= options to dd(1) to get it to run a bit quicker.
> 
> Pm
> --------------
> Patrick R. Michaud, Ph.D, RHCE #808002519807115
> Web:   http://www.pmichaud.com
> Email: pmichaud at pobox.com
>   
> 
> On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 10:41:01AM -0800, Philip Stetz wrote:
> > I was in the middle of doing a clean install of RH 9
> > and had a huge change of heart ... deciding to dump RH
> > in favor of Suse.  I basically got as far as deleting
> > the partitions and starting to install grub.  No big
> > deal, I have backed up everything anyways.
> > 
> > So now I would like to wipe everything off my hard
> > drive (including MBR) and start over from scratch. 
> > Anyone know of any good tools I can use to create a
> > boot floppy and reformat my drive with?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Phil
> > 
> > 
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