Best way to "scrub" a disk?

[Kenneth Platz]

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.

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

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

[Simon Hargrave]

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

[Steven E. Protter]

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

[Fred Ruffet]

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

Regards,

Fred