wiping partitions

[Jason Joines]

Jorge Almeida wrote:
> 
> 
>>>> On Wed, Nov 14, 2007, Jorge Almeida wrote:
> 
> Well, hammering a hd may be fun, but with my luck I would probably lose
> an eye to a flying case fragment. I said "within reason", which means I
> want to just forget the drive (keeping it for an emergency, perhaps) and
> I have nothing that would be remotelly interesting to any agency, but
> I'm paranoid enough to not want to leave a forgotten written hd behind
> in case I'm run over by a taxi...
> I read somewhere (sometime ago) that the best, software only, way to
> wipe a partition was to overwrite it in several passes with some
> patterns (not just zeros). There was some software to do that, but I
> can't remember which.  I was hoping someone would be using it.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Jorge



     I believe the suggestion in an earlier response to have dd use 
/dev/random or /dev/urandom alternating with /dev/zero will pretty much 
do what you're looking for.


Jason Joines
=================================