On Sat, 2012-01-28 at 14:46 +0000, Andy Smith wrote: > Hello, > > On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 10:41:36AM +0000, Ted Wager wrote: > > I used gparted to blank a couple of hdd's that I am getting rid of > > however the mbrr was not formatted and they still boot from grub. > > Anyone tell me how I format the drive so it is completely blank ? > > Ah, the old "how do I securely erase a drive" chestnut. :) People > are often keen to go into a lot of detail about the ingenious > methods they use to overwrite data, destroy drives, etc. etc. > because clearly the security of their data is of immense importance > and you just can't be sure, right? > > For all practical purposes, overwriting the entire disk just once > with something like dd, e.g.: > > $ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M > > will render it unrecoverable. No data recovery company will promise > to be able to get any data whatsoever off of that. This is the > quickest way to achieve what you want while still ending up with a > working drive. If someone thinks they can get any data off of that, > they should be asked why they aren't in the commercial data recovery > business, since they apparently know how to do it better than anyone > else who is. :) > > In theory there may be data left in inaccessible areas of the drive, > such as the spare sectors that the manufacturer included. In theory > an entity with a vast amount of resources may be able to take your > drive apart in a lab and use minute differences in magnetic field to > guess at what was written before the single pass of data was written > over the top by dd. > > If that is a realistic risk for you¹, then you may want to retire to > your island stronghold and instruct a henchman to run Darik's boot > and nuke (DBAN). This may take a day or more, especially if you use > one of the more thorough modes. > > If you need quick and don't care about the drive working afterwards, > melt the platters to liquid or grind them down to dust. > > Cheers, > Andy > I am not bothered. abt the data..All I want is for the machine to boot from the hdd so the buyer can install an os. If they want a Linux system I will install it but if they want Windows they are on their own. Regards Ted Wager
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