[NTLUG:Discuss] erase a hard drive

[Alvin Goats]

> Has any one used this (free version) to erase a hard drive?
> 
> <http://www.killdisk.com/features.htm>


Nope. 

I have used "srm", "secure remove". The 38 passes pretty well destroys
data, with an initial  0xFF, 5 passes of random data using /dev/urandom,
Gutman's passes, and a final 5 passes of random data.  srm comes with
several utilities:

srm - secure unix remove and inode wipe, works on many filesystems
sfill - securely wipes unused disk space and inodes.
sswap - securely wipes the swap disk
smem - securely wipes memory (RAM)

It's available at:

http://www.thc.org

I've used it to wipe floppies, Zip disks, Jaz disks, Bernoulli disks,
Syquest disks, IDE/MFM/SCSI hard drives, SD/Compact Flash cards and a
JumpDrive. Between destroying what was on a used drive or disk I pick
up, utterly destroying virii and keeping my sensitive data secure by
totally deleting it, I've found it pretty usefull. 

I still haven't found anything that will do this to CD-RW/DVD-RW media
as yet.

Probably the best way to wipe a disk is to:

fdisk and set NO partitions as applicable 
If a low level formatter is available, use it (i.e.- a SCSI disk format
utility for your SCSI card).
Run badblocks from a Linux box to do a 4 pass bad block ID and verify
fdisk and set the entire disk as a single partition
Set up a filesystem, i.e. ext2
mount the filesystem somewhere i.e. /fill
sfill wipe the filesystem: sfill -v /fill 

When it's all done, fdisk and partition the disk as you desire and
install the filesytem(s) of your choice. If anybody wants to recover
what was on the disk, more power to 'em!

Alvin