I want to give away my old Mandrake box. It's a typical dual HD machine
with Linux on hdb

Is there a utility anyone can recommend to wipe the hdb drive? My guess is
the next user will only use Windows.

If I just ran fdisk would that wipe?

Thanks,

Al

Adams-Blake Company wrote:
> I want to give away my old Mandrake box. It's a typical dual HD machine
> with Linux on hdb
>
> Is there a utility anyone can recommend to wipe the hdb drive? My guess is
> the next user will only use Windows.
>
> If I just ran fdisk would that wipe?

Boot with a KNOPPIX CD and run:
cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda
cat /dev/urandom > /dev/hda
badblocks -c 64 -p 2 -w /dev/hda

Not sure that's the right badblocks command but something like
that. Wipe it a couple of different ways if you worry about
anything being recovered.

--
Confucius: He who play in root, eventually kill tree.
Registered with The Linux Counter. http://counter.li.org/
Slackware 9.1.0 Kernel 2.4.22 SMP i686 (GCC) 3.3.2
Uptime: 5 days, 52 min, 3 users, load average: 0.83, 0.66, 0.5

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:59:50 -0800, Adams-Blake Company wrote:

> I want to give away my old Mandrake box. It's a typical dual HD machine
> with Linux on hdb

Install Slackware before passing it on...

> Is there a utility anyone can recommend to wipe the hdb drive?

mke2fs -v -F /dev/hdb1
shred -vfz /dev/hdb1

> My guess is the next user will only use Windows.

Why not leave it dual-boot and have them decide?

> If I just ran fdisk would that wipe?

No.
But, "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb" or, "cat /dev/zero >/dev/hdb" should...
(In which case the partition-table gets overwritten as well.)

> Thanks,

Sure thing.

--
-Menno.

On Saturday 29 November 2003 1:59 am in alt.os.linux.slackware Adams-Blake
Company wrote:

> I want to give away my old Mandrake box. It's a typical dual HD machine
> with Linux on hdb
>
> Is there a utility anyone can recommend to wipe the hdb drive? My guess is
> the next user will only use Windows.
>
> If I just ran fdisk would that wipe?

There is no way short of total destruction to prevent a really
determined forensic data recovery expert getting to your files.

Boot from your slack install cd then make new filesystems with
error checking on the existing partitions. Once the new filesystems
have been made ctrl-c out to a shell and use fdisk to remove the
partitions.
This should be good enough for most purposes.

BUT a lot depends on your paranoia settings. If anything on the
disk might be incriminating you should disassemble the drive,
sandblast the platters, cut the platters into small pieces, and
dispose of both the pieces and the blasting sand. The platter
pieces can probably be slagged with a cutting torch and the sand
could be scattered on a beach at low water.


--
My real address is crn (at) netunix (dot) com
WARNING all messages containing attachments or html will be silently
deleted. Send only plain text.

Menno Duursma <menno@desktop.lan> wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:59:50 -0800, Adams-Blake Company wrote:

> > I want to give away my old Mandrake box. It's a typical dual
> > HD machine with Linux on hdb

> Install Slackware before passing it on...

No, don't do that. Sell it with nothing on it unless the buyer
asks you to install an OS. Most buyers would have to remove linux
and that is just another reason to swear that the zealots who use
it.

> > Is there a utility anyone can recommend to wipe the hdb drive?

> mke2fs -v -F /dev/hdb1
> shred -vfz /dev/hdb1

> > My guess is the next user will only use Windows.

> Why not leave it dual-boot and have them decide?

Because if they want linux on there they will undoubtedly want to
put it on themselves. You only alienate people when you act like
you presume to know more than they do. You should know that by
now.

cordially, as always,

rm

Chris Newport <me@see-my-sig.invalid> says...

>There is no way short of total destruction to prevent a really
>determined forensic data recovery expert getting to your files.

It is commonly believed that this is true, but it has never
been proven one way or the other.

Unless the OP's name is Osama and a bunch of his buddies flew
airlanes into the WTC, there is a very high probability that
the following utility will prevent even a determined attacker
from recovering the data: http://dban.sourceforge.net/


--
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire.
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like
Doc Brown can solve? My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

Chris Newport wrote:

> On Saturday 29 November 2003 1:59 am in alt.os.linux.slackware Adams-Blake
> Company wrote:
>
>> I want to give away my old Mandrake box. It's a typical dual HD machine
>> with Linux on hdb
>>
>> Is there a utility anyone can recommend to wipe the hdb drive? My guess
>> is the next user will only use Windows.
>>
>> If I just ran fdisk would that wipe?
>
> There is no way short of total destruction to prevent a really
> determined forensic data recovery expert getting to your files.
>
> Boot from your slack install cd then make new filesystems with
> error checking on the existing partitions. Once the new filesystems
> have been made ctrl-c out to a shell and use fdisk to remove the
> partitions.
> This should be good enough for most purposes.
>
> BUT a lot depends on your paranoia settings.

This is an old Gateway P2/450.... probably worth about $200 max.... and
probably way less than that. I'm going to give the thing away (most likely
to a charity or school (and take a tax deduction)). I don't have anything
confidential or incriminating on the machine but I want to at least clean
it up for whomever gets it.

I figure the easiest thing to do is to simply re-install Windows 98 and let
it format both the C and the D drives. Then I can use one of the disk-wipe
utilities on each and that's that.

My guess is that whomever gets the thing will want to install XP or whatever
ever on it.

Now that I think of it, I'm not giving away my W98 as I need it for Win4Lin.
It's probably not legal for me to leave W98 on the box and also keep the
W98 on the box. So I guess I will simply install Slack on hda and use the
answers given in this thread to clean off hdb. Hmmm. As a Linux machine,
already configured, it might even have more value than a Win box? No matter
I don't want / need the $$$ I just want to get the box out of here.

Al

Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com> says...
>
>Chris Newport <me@see-my-sig.invalid> says...
>
>>There is no way short of total destruction to prevent a really
>>determined forensic data recovery expert getting to your files.
>
>It is commonly believed that this is true, but it has never
>been proven one way or the other.

Here is Peter Gutmann's paper, _Secure Deletion of Data from
Magnetic and Solid-State Memory_.

http://www.usenix.org/publications/l...apers/gutmann/


>--
>Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire.
>Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you
>have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like
>Doc Brown can solve? My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/
>

--
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire.
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like
Doc Brown can solve? My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

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On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 20:13:13 -0800, Adams-Blake Company <atakeoutcanton@adams-blaketakeout.com> wrote:
> I don't want / need the $$$ I just want to get the box out of here.

Ship it to me... I'll pay for the shipping. :-)

I need more CPUs for Distcc and Boinc! And hard drive space, I'm always
running out of that... *sigh*....

--
Rob | If not safe,
Email and Jabber: | one can never be free.
athlonrob at axpr dot net |
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AthlonRob wrote:

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>
> On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 20:13:13 -0800, Adams-Blake Company
> <atakeoutcanton@adams-blaketakeout.com> wrote:
>> I don't want / need the $$$ I just want to get the box out of here.
>
> Ship it to me... I'll pay for the shipping. :-)
>
> I need more CPUs for Distcc and Boinc! And hard drive space, I'm always
> running out of that... *sigh*....
>

Start a non-profit organization and get IRS certification (or whatever its
called) to allow a donor to take a legal tax deduction and you will
probably get all the machines you could ever want!

Al