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how to shred a harddisk

Posted: 25 May 2014, 16:55
by lukaluki
Is there some module available for porteus to shred a harddisk completely, also empty space ? (overwrite with random data) + showing the progress ?
I am using the ram-only version.

Re: how to shred a harddisk

Posted: 25 May 2014, 17:15
by fanthom
not sure about available slackware packages but brokenman is working on 'Porteus Rescue' edition and i believe that such tool is a 'must have' in it:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=3276

Re: how to shred a harddisk

Posted: 25 May 2014, 21:08
by brokenman
For complete destruction of data I would recommend dropping it from a very high building followed by gasoline and fire. :D
There will be some some type of 'erasing' tool in the rescue edition. Not sure which yet but will take a look. Any suggestions lukaluki?

Re: how to shred a harddisk

Posted: 26 May 2014, 00:26
by roadie
I've just been trying a shred gui, called Shredder, written in Python. It's a very simple gui, no frills, but seems to work fine. It hasn't had any activity since 2011.
I can post the link if anyone wants it.

Re: how to shred a harddisk

Posted: 27 May 2014, 01:45
by wread
I downloaded once an el torito iso for that purpose. You just flipped it the cdrom, rebooted with cdrom preference, and the harddisk was cleaned in minutes.

Maybe I have the cd in my working place at the office. I will check on that tomorrow..

Cheers!

Re: how to shred a harddisk

Posted: 27 May 2014, 01:51
by brokenman
I've checked out shredder already. Not sure I want to add python as a runtime dep though. The el torito is a bootable ROM so probably no good in this situation since the system being booted into will be porteus. Perhaps I can steal some components from it though if the licence permits.

Re: how to shred a harddisk

Posted: 27 May 2014, 03:49
by donald
Journaling file systems:
On such systems, data remnants may exist in locations "outside" the nominal
file storage location.

SSDs:
Wear leveling can defeat data erasure,
by relocating blocks between the time when they are originally written
and the time when they are overwritten.
Wear leveling can also produce copies of the data that are invisible to the user
and can be recovered.

Re: how to shred a harddisk

Posted: 27 May 2014, 10:36
by beny
take a look at this link maybe something is useful,btw you have to know the right device: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Securely_wipe_disk