The shot gun won't work (perfectly) you need something more like a grinding tool to turn the platter in to fine dust (preferably not of uniform size). ----- Original Message ----- From: "John G. Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu> To: <matt.bsa@wh1t3.net>; "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 7:27 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format. The last time I saw this topic on a linux discussion list, the recommendation was to take the platter out and shoot it with a shotgun. According to the guy who wrote the post, it had the advantage of requiring no special tools. As if everyone has a shotgun. Anyway, Ibraam asked how to destroy a drive so that even the military couldn't recover the data. I think its important to point out that only the military would know that for sure and they're not likely to say. So if you really want to be as sure as you can be, I'd first wipe the drive with dd and then also severely physically damage the platter with something like a shotgun, hammer, blow torch, or hacksaw. Linux also has a wipe command that does a more scientific job of wiping a disk than the dd command I gave earlier. If you're not worried about the CIA getting ahold of your drive, I think using wipe or just doing the dd command a few times will be sufficient. If you're just selling a drive on ebay, you can use wipe or dd. ----- Original Message ----- From: "White, Matt" <matt.bsa@wh1t3.net> To: <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 8:47 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format. I do not believe that DD will address the reserve block area of the drive; the OS is not aware of this area (this is true of Linux as well as Windows). The best way to wipe a drive permanently is to cut up the platters--physically destroy the drive. Check out this PDF for more information on levels of data destruction. +http://cmr r.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/CmrrSecureEraseProtocols.pdf On Tue, May 18, 2010 09:22, John G. Heim wrote:
I do not know. Where is that information kept?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Mustill-Rose" <bmustillrose@gmail.com> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 3:38 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format.
Thanks for this John, considder this linux newbe enlightened.
Would you happen to know if this command ignores feedback from the drive in regards to what blocks are considdered bad or not? Each drive has a g list containing a list of bad blocks, which are more often than not invisible to the end user or any software unless they start issuing ata commands to the drive to expose it. The problem being is that some formatting programs also skip these bad blocks, when in actual fact, they can still contain data.
Ben.
On 18/05/2010, John G. Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> wrote:
This is a frequently asked question on linux lists. It usually generates quite a bit of debate because the military doesn't usually tell people what they can do so you can only speculate on what it would take to destroy the data so that even the military can't recover it. Certainly, if you destroy the platter physically by doing something like hitting it with a hammer, that should do it.
But most people believe that just wiping the disk a dozen or so times will do it. You can do that with the dd command lie this:
Dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda
That's if your disk is a sata drive. For IDE drives, the command would be:
Dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/had
Those commands write random digits over the entire drive, wiping out the boot sector, partition table, and all data. You would have to do that several times because the read/write heads might not line up exactly right to destroy every single bit if you do it just once.
-----Original Message----- .From: "Ibraam Wahib"<ibraam.wahib@gmail.com> .Sent: 5/17/10 4:38:19 AM .To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> .Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] data format. . .hello friends: .need quick help please, .how can I format a hard disk which can not be recovered forever by any means? )data destroyed( .the hard was have windows format then formatted and now have Linux, I need to delete all partitions and delete any data to be unusable anymore even via military means. .can we do this? .for further information contact me off list. .thanks .ibraam ._______________________________________________ .Blind-sysadmins mailing list .Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org .http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins .
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