[clug] Secure Erase of disks/drives

Tomasz Ciolek tmc at vandradlabs.com.au
Tue May 8 03:49:33 GMT 2007


 I have quite successfully used /dev/zero to zerou out the disk... 

I mean in the WHOLE disk is juzt zeros, what difference does it make as
to ist previous contents?

Tomasz

On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 01:20:49PM +1000, Adam Thomas wrote:
> On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 12:56:58PM +1000, Alex Satrapa wrote:
> > Hmm... I wonder if I really meant /dev/urandom? I think urandom  
> > resorts to pseudo-random numbers after the entropy pool is exhausted,  
> > where /dev/random gives you random numbers only while there are bits  
> > left in the entropy pool.
> > 
> > Or... just cat an MPEG movie to the disk?  Compressed junk is  
> > probably "random" enough unless someone knows exactly which movie  
> > file you used, and then uses that to guide their interpretation of  
> > the output from the scanning magnetic force microscope...
> 
> I've been meaning to hook up a webcam and run video_entropyd[1] for a
> disk scrubbing machine. I just don't have anywhere in my office that
> has enough activity to generate decent entropy. 
> 
> The same guy has also writen an audio_entropyd and has links to other
> code/devices which aid in entropy gathering.
> 
> Adam
> 
> [1] http://www.vanheusden.com/ved/
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-- 
Tomasz M. Ciolek	
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