Difference between revisions of "Using Ubuntu installer CD to securely erase a hard drive"
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6. Used '''shred''' to erase the drive: | 6. Used '''shred''' to erase the drive: | ||
| − | shred | + | /usr/bin/shred -f -v -z -n 7 /dev/sda |
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| + | This will run 7 passes of random data over the drive and then zero the whole drive, while showing you the status. I let it run overnight and in the morning I had a nice clean drive :) | ||
Latest revision as of 03:48, 24 May 2011
In most instances, when you have an old hard disk you want to erase, I would say go and download the latest version of DBAN (http://www.dban.org/) and wipe away! However, I have found that on occasion, depending on the hardware being used, you may not be able to boot off the DBAN disk. I had one such instance where I was trying to erase the hard drive in a Lenovo ThinkPad T61. DBAN kept crashing during boot, presumably as it tried to come to terms with the fact the machine has an inbuilt SD card reader. In the end I gave up on DBAN and did the following:
1. Downloaded an ISO of the latest Ubuntu installer releast, in this case 11.04, and burnt it to CD.
2. Booted off the CD.
3. When asked if I wanted to Try Ubuntu or Install Ubuntu, I chose to Try it!
4. Once into the Ubuntu environment, I fired up the Terminal program.
5. Became the root user
sudo bash
6. Used shred to erase the drive:
/usr/bin/shred -f -v -z -n 7 /dev/sda
This will run 7 passes of random data over the drive and then zero the whole drive, while showing you the status. I let it run overnight and in the morning I had a nice clean drive :)
