Re: Complete Wiping of a hard drive

This question came up recently on the EUGLUG list - here's
what Bob M. had to say:

<EUGLUG List Quote>
> hi you guys! i am trying to completely "swipe" the hard disk clean on 
> my desktop pc, the one that neal and joseph helped me partition with 
> linux and windows in january. i managed to wipe the windows side clean 
> by formatting but haven't erased the knoppix side or taken the 
> partition out.

Use the shred command.

1. Boot your KNOPPIX CD.
2. Open a root shell. (Select "Root Shell" from the KNOPPIX menu.)
3. At the root shell, type this.

	shred -zv /dev/hda

4. Walk away.  Come back the next day.
5. Shut down KNOPPIX and remove the CD. (Select "Log out" from the
   main menu)

That will securely wipe out your Windows partition, your Linux
partition, and your partition table (so you can't tell where the
Windows and Linux partitions were).  It will run for a long time,
certainly an hour and maybe a whole day, depending on how big
the disk is and how slow the PC is.

-- 
Bob Miller                              K<bob>
</EUGLUG List Quote>

Pretty good solution IMO.

-Beaker


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