[CentOS] What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing harddisks?

m.roth at 5-cent.us m.roth at 5-cent.us
Mon Apr 2 18:26:18 UTC 2018


Fred Smith wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 02, 2018 at 05:29:13PM +0100, Phil Dobbin wrote:
>> On 02/04/18 15:09, wwp wrote:
>>
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, 2 Apr 2018 10:01:56 -0400 m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> >
>> >> Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming wrote:
>> >>> Good evening from Singapore!
>> >>>
>> >>> The foremost question which I want to ask is, what is the universal
>> >>> (world wide) understanding behind degaussing hard drives?
>> >>>
>> >>> I work for No Secrets Agency (NSA) Pte Ltd (fictitious company name
>> >>> used). My sales manager Edward Joseph Snowden (fictitious individual
>> >>> name used) had *promised* our customer Leave Me in the Lurch (S) Pte
>> >>> Ltd (fictitious company name used) that we would "DEGAUSS" their
>> hard
>> >>> disks after the PC replacement and data migration exercise for 15
>> >>> trillion PCs (fictitious number used).
>> >>>
>> >>> PC = Personal Computer, which includes desktops and laptops
>> >>>
>> >> <snip>
>> >> A little too much other info, and overly eloquent. However, if your
>> >> company told the client that you were going to deGauss all the h/d,
>> that's
>> >> what you need to do, contractually.
>> >>
>> >> If they've had a second discussion, and only want the data deleted,
>> that's
>> >> another story.
>> >>
>> >> Is the data on a different partition than the o/s (i.e., /data? If
>> so, you
>> >> can easily wipe the data, using say, shred, or DBAN (which offers
>> both
>> >> 3-pass and the full 7-pass DoD 5220.22-M). If it's in the same
>> partition,
>> >> and the same filesystem, you've got other issues. How do you
>> *guarantee*
>> >> that there's no user data - say, installed third-party software mixed
>> with
>> >> the o/s?
>> >>
>> >> Note that you really do have to make any third-party software, if
>> it's
>> >> commercial, Go Away.
>> >
>> > Note that the original message has also been sent to the fedora users
>> > mailing list, no doubt it's spam now.
>>
>> this message turned up on ubuntu users as well.
>
> which explains why I'm NOT going to view the attached file. You neer
> know what is in it.
>
Perhaps, then, the poster needs their head deGaussed....

     mark




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