[Tfug] Wiping out a hard drive

[Zack Williams]

> I choose the default setting. Is this usually good enough? I mean good
> enough for someone that is not going to be targeted by someone with
> expensive equipment and time to waste on some lay person like me.

Default is a 3 pass random overwrite, plus blanking it at the end.
Should be more than sufficient.

> It said there were zero errors. I did suspect that the disk had problems
> prior to using DBAN, only because the last install had errors. But that
> could have been my internet connection (it was a net install). Would this
> matter much?

If it says it finished without errors, the drive is likely good.   It
will say "completed with errors" if it can't finish it's job
(unfortunately it doesn't give any other stats), at which point if
you're really worried about what might have been on the drive, it's
physical destruction time.

Thus, a small sledgehammer is a totally valid IT expense :)

- Zack