[CentOS] erase disk

m.roth at 5-cent.us m.roth at 5-cent.us
Thu Sep 26 19:26:49 UTC 2013


Please don't top post.

Bret Taylor wrote:
> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>Bret Taylor wrote:
>>> Phil Dobbin <bukowskiscat at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>I have a CentOS server (a Dell 860) with two drives in it.
>>>>One is running CentOS 6.4 which I want to keep & the bigger 400GB
>>drive has Debian 7 on it which I want to erase & use for backups.
>>>>Which is the best way to go about achieving my intended goal? The
>>>>Debian drive is not mounted when Centos is booted.
>>>>
>>>>Any help appreciated.
>>
>>> Burn a DBAN disk. Shutdown, pull out the drive you want to keep. Boot
>>to the dban disk, when prompted type autonuke, wait for the process to
>>> complete. Shutdown, reinsert the centos drive you wanted to keep. You
>>will now have your centos main drive, and a blank backup disk. You'll need
>>to run mkfs on the blank drive. Then mount it where you want it.
>>>
>>Then put the dban disk on the shelf over your desk - you *will* want it
>>again (and again, and again....)
>>
>>Most *excellent* piece of software. Of course, working for a US federal
>>contractor, when I sanitize, I overkill (DoD 5220.22-M)... but I *am*
>>signing my name to the form guaranteeing it's clean.
>>
>>We, at least, are not going to have accidents with PII and HIPAA data.
>>
> Better safe than sorry. Even if people think it's "overkill". There's
> paranoid, and then there's best practice; in my mind they're one in the
> same.

The reality is that it's massive overkill. A dozen years ago, seven passes
would guarantee cleanliness. These days, the way the data's stored on
modern drives, I've seen people argue that one was sufficient, and surely
two would be.

But it's no big deal. I usually do four at a time, shove them into an old,
decommissioned server that I saved for the purpose, and leave dban in the
DVD drive, fire it up, choose that, and the drives, and walk away. The
next day, the following Monday, who cares? I'm mostly using them for
servers that we're about to surplus.

       mark




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