OT: Disposing Old Computer Parts

[Mike Oliver]

Quoting Sheldon Mustard <smustard-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>:

> On 6/6/07, Kevin Cozens <kevin-4dS5u2o1hCn3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Sheldon Mustard wrote:
>> > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1024
>>
>> That is a very poor way to wipe a disk. The data will still be recoverable
>> with the right hardware/tools. Most of the programs designed to make data
>> unrecoverable include several passes where random data is written to 
>> the disk.
>> IIRC, you need at least six different writes of data to truly make the
>> information unrecoverable.
>
> Yes good call, so several (maybe 10 or 15) passes with /dev/random then.

That will take a *looong* time, unless it's a really small HDD.  The
idea of /dev/random is that it doesn't output bits faster than it
can accumulate entropy (from keystrokes, disk start times, etc).  So
it's quite slow.  Unless you're up against the NSA or equivalent, I'd think
using /dev/urandom instead should be adequate.  If you *are* up against
the NSA I don't want to know about it.

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