[vox] Wipe data

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bill Broadley (bill at broadley.org):

> On 02/20/2015 11:13 AM, Brian E. Lavender wrote:
> > Data Wiping Software
> > http://www.dban.org/
> 
> Er, that's slow and not particularly effective.  Did you read the
> disclaimers right at the top left?
> 
> I'd recommend a single overwrite with dd, or just to a ATA Secure Erase.

Not tested, but here are some tips about using ATA Secure Erase using a
gratis utility for DOS (which means you can presumably use it from a
FreeDOS image):
http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-really-erase-a-hard-drive/

Bill, I had the impression that Dban was a good bit better than
single-pass dd'ing, and that the disclaimers were primarily intended as
an answer to the 'Are you guaranteeing that $BIG_TLA_AGENCY cannot
recover my data after Dban?' people, but that it's good enough for most
needs.

Back when I helped build an HPC cluster for LLNL, they would never send
back a deployed hard drive for any reason, and my understanding was that 
HDs were 'retired' using thermite.  _That's_ secure erasure.

I've mostly worked with SCSI drives and guestimated that low-level
reformatting them using a SCSI HBA's firmware routines is good enough.

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