[KLUG Members] Formatting a drive: Is it clean?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > Or you can use any LINUX boot/rescue disk and..
> > dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda bs=512
> > Run it through at least three times.
> Ah, the most simple and straightforward way of doing something <G>

What can I say,  I'm a lazy american.

> I wonder how this would compare to the Guttman DOD algorithm advertised
> in many of the disk wiping utilities.  Unless one is worried that the
> disk platters will be subjected to a clean room with advanced equipment
> and a highly paid physicist, it makes no difference no?

I think it is almost exactly the same thing.  The key is to use a
randomized pattern and to make multiple passes.  The more passes you
make the more you suppress the residual image,  most DOD wipe programs
I've used seemed happy with three passes.

But I'm more worried about casual data-gawkers than people with clean
rooms... those people have the resources to just find another way to get
the data [ and these days they don't even need a subpoena or search
warrant apparently :) ].   There are more data-gawkers then you might
think;  when a certain person whom I know was younger lots of
organizations from churches, to schools, even {other organizations I'm
too chicken-#$&* to mention} used to discard lots of media in the trash
- back in the days of floppy disks.  They got handed around like trading
cards minus the bubble gum.  These days I imagine it is CDs, DAT tapes,
USB drives, and old hard drives.  

Personally, I prefer to drive over used media with a forklift.  Or I'm
told an arc-welder is also quite effective - and quicker.

> What if you want to wipe only free space within the filesystem, and the
> cooresponding entries in the partition "table" -- to loosely use the term?

I think you'd need a filesystem specific utility.  But you could always
tar the filesystem, scrub the partition, and untar it.  The tar doesn't
included deleted stuff.  That is the lazy mans defragmenter as well.
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