[CentOS] Wiping USB drives

Sat Apr 14 16:28:51 UTC 2007
centos at 911networks.com <centos at 911networks.com>

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:20:16 -0500 (CDT)
Barry Brimer <lists at brimer.org> wrote:

> > I have a dozen of drives, ranging from 10Gb to 200Gb. I want to
> > wipe them clean before donating them. I have a IDE/SATA to USB
> > converter that works. I can see the drives properly.
> 
> Depending on the filesystem on the drives, shred may be fine
> "man shred" can tell you more.  You can also use
> "cat /dev/random > /dev/devicename" as well.

I have looked at shred before asking, and it said:

The following are examples of file systems on which shred
is not effective, or is not guaranteed to be effective in
all file system modes:

* log-structured or journaled file systems, such as those supplied
with AIX and Solaris (and JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, Ext3, etc.)


How secure is cat /dev/random > /dev/devicename ?

-- 
Thanks
http://www.911networks.com
When the network has to work