removing data from an old system

[JIM WECHTER]

I am selling an old 817 system. What is the best way to make sure all data is removed from the hard drives? Please be specific. I am a novice sysadmin.

[Michael Elleby III_1 · Accepted solution]

Jim-

you can use the dd command to do this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/(somedisk) bs=1024

'somedisk' is the device filename of the disk you are trying to erase. You might want to try a bigger block size (i.e. 4096) to make the process go quicker.

Mike-

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

Since you are selling the system, your customer would appreciate if you could load the OS. Install fresh OS on the root disk. Once you have the new OS running, then on all the other local disks do

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/rdsk/cxtydz

-Sri

[Larry Reinhart]

Hi Jim,

How secure do you want the disk to be? For security purposes I would run mediainit a few times on the disk to "clean" it. I know this will take a while but you do not want your company's information going out into the world.

Once initted you can install a fresh operating system on it.

Have a great day!
Larry