Security and harddisk crubbing in Linux

[Anthony Wesley]

Drake Diedrich wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Oct 26, 2001 at 12:46:19AM +1000, Travis Ecclestone wrote:
> >
> > I have some scrubbing tools for Windows file systems (East Tec Eraser
> > 2000) but want to know about similar programs for Linux.  Do they exist?
> > what is the best one?  I want one that will prevent software and hardware
> > tool recovery.  East Tec Eraser can sanitise to a level over and above the
> > US Dept of Defense standards and to the Guttman level (prevention of
> > hardware tool recovery).  Is there a similar system around for Linux/
> >
> 
>    What is a disk scrubber required to do beyond:
> 
> for count in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ; do dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hdc ; done

Why write random bits? Why not just zero everything with

	... dd if=/dev/zero ...

This will run somewhat faster.

cheers, Anthony