[vox-tech] Most efficient way to wipe hard drives

[Bill Broadley]

Tony Cratz wrote:
> Bill Broadley wrote:
>> Well shred is for files, not disks.  Erasing files is much trickier.  Most
>> editors make backup copies, undo logs, etc.  Not to mention every time you
>> edit a file the previous version (typically) gets deleted, thus those blocks
>> are on the free list and floating around your disk.  Not to mention any blocks
>> that are swapped out.
>>
>> I'd consider shred radically less secure than just dd'ing the entire disk,
>> which is itself less secure than a secure erase.
> 
> 
> 	Us old school Unix people use to say that everything in Unix was
> 	a file, be it a disk or a normal file.

Heh, sure, of course there's a few warnings.  Shared libraries, other
processes writing to the filesystem, caching, etc.  Also if used on a file
it's highly filesystem dependent, see the man page.