How about /usr/bin/shred...?!?

Quoting Jon Lewis <[log in to unmask]>:

> On Sun, 21 Jan 2007, Matt wrote:
>
>> What are some tools to securely erase a hard disk?
>
> Depends. Do you want the disk to be reusable, or is physical
> destruction an option?
>
> For the former, you could overwrite the entire disk with junk
> (/dev/random for instance) multiple times, but that's time consuming.
>
> For the latter, 5.56mm rounds will do a number on it, but with the
> rising cost and scarcity of quality ammo, that's becoming a less
> appealing means for data security, especially if you have many drives
> to dispose of.
>
> A while back, Atlantic.net needed to dispose of a bunch of old 2GB SCSI
> drives. I just whacked each one several times with a big hammer. To
> get any data off them, you'd have to disassemble the drive and either
> somehow straighten the platters or come up with a means for reading
> deformed platters. Probably not worth the effort for 10 year old
> usenet posts or a shadow file with passwords nobody uses anymore.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jon Lewis | I route
> Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are
> Atlantic Net |
> _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________