On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 01:57:47PM -0600, Andrew Falanga wrote: > Hi, > > I'm having no luck finding hits for "wipe drive" or "zero drive" in > the mail list archives and I can't believe I'm the first to ask this > question but here it is anyway. How can I simply write 0's across a > USB thumb drive?
I'm not sure about flash memory, but for a harddrive, simple writing 0's is not a secure way to delete data. It can still be recovered. > I'd rather not install a port, if I can avoid it. I Have a look at security/wipe. > was thinking that something like dd would work, but everything I've > tried thus far is not working. What suggestions does everyone have? I think the trick is to use the right block size. Try bs=512 or 2048 in your dd command. Use if=/dev/random instead of if=/dev/zero and repeat a couple of times. Note that wiping flash drives way will shorten the lifespan of the device. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
pgpFlUDyCpIT5.pgp
Description: PGP signature