topic Best way to "scrub" a disk? in Operating System - HP-UX

Best way to "scrub" a disk?

Kenneth Platz — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:30:59 GMT

Hullo everyone,

What's the best way to irrecoverably "wipe" data from a disk? And no, I don't think that just dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/dsk/ is sufficient. We need to scrub some disks here in such a way that they're still usable, but that someone down the line can't somehow recover the data.

Re: Best way to "scrub" a disk?

Pete Randall — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:36:21 GMT

Well you wouldn't want to use /dev/null anyway - /dev/zero is the preferred input. I'm sure you're going to get recommendations for mediainit but, because you want these disks to remain useable, I wouldn't use it.

Here are several related threads:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=13542
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=374669
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=597812

Pete

Re: Best way to "scrub" a disk?

Simon Hargrave — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:37:51 GMT

i would dd from /dev/random a few times if you want to be really sure.

Re: Best way to "scrub" a disk?

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:45:01 GMT

I am a believer in doing an OS install if an entire system is to be wiped and several runs of the dd commands suggested if an OS install is not possible.

SEP

Re: Best way to "scrub" a disk?

Fred Ruffet — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:46:37 GMT

dd if=/dev/zero to the rdsk device is enough. If you wan't to be sure, just do it twice :)

Regards,

Fred