[CentOS] erase disk

[Nicolas Thierry-Mieg]

mark wrote:
> On 09/26/13 18:32, Bret Taylor wrote:
>> Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 26 Sep 2013, SilverTip257 wrote:
>>>
>>>> Eh, I don't really think dban is necessary.  Probably more than an
>>>> fdisk and creating a file system is overkill.
>>>
>>> My policies are work are simple:
>>>
>>>    1. Re-use by same employee: stick with filesystem tools.
>>>    2. Re-use within company: single-pass zeroing of disk.
>>>    3. Retirement of asset: three-pass of random bits.
>>>
>>> I've never seen the need for a seven-pass randomization. If pressed,
>>> I'd probably agree that a one-pass zeroing is good enough for just
>>> about any situation. Asset retirement isn't a time-sensitive task,
>>> however, so I always use a three-pass randomization before it heads
>>> out the door.
>>
>> You all realize that dban only offers 3 passes, unless you pay for it,
>> right? DBAN is easy, that's why I recommended it.
>
> Um, no. It offers DoD 5220.22-M, which it *says* is seven passes, and I've
> seen that it is. And we normally use a disk until a) it dies, or b) the
> server it's in dies, and then reuse, or, more likely, sits around until we
> consider it too small.... On top of which, I *do* need to guarantee that
> it's clean, as I noted originally. I have *zero* intention of winding up in
> a news story about someone buying an old surplussed server, and finding all
> *sorts* of interesting data on the h/d in it.


although this kind of chest-thumping may elicit the occasional chuckle 
from bored or weary list members on this friday afternoon, it's not much 
help to the OP who AFAICR was simply asking how to reuse in centos a HDD 
that is currently used by another OS on the same computer. So basically 
s/he was asking for fdisk + mkfs + edit /etc/fstab , as suggested by 
some. No need to digress further on DOD regulations and whatnot on this 
centos list. Thanks.
Sur ce, bon week-end!