I would strongly suggest using DBAN (http://dban.sourceforge.net/) or Shred (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/manuals/unix/coreutils-6.6/coreutils_77.html) to wipe your hard disk. The shred web page gives some info on why it's a good idea to do something more thorough than simply overwrite the disk with zeroes.
Shred is part of GNU coreutils so you probably have it already. DBAN is a boot disk that does basically the same thing. I've used both and they are a breeze to use... a highly recommended precaution! Dan On Sun, 2006-12-10 at 20:06 -0500, J. Milgram wrote: > For preparing a machine for sale/giveaway, does it suffice to do > > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 (2,3,4, etc) > > on each of the partitions? > > Any better ideas? > > Let's assume I'm up against average folks, not NSA (who probably have my > credit card info already) > > Judah
