[Tfug] Drive erase options?

[Jim Secan]

I still hold out that the caliche bar is the best drive disabler  
ever.  Lots of good anger venting as well.

Jim
==================================
James Secan
NorthWest Research Associates, Inc
4118 148th Ave NE
Redmond, WA  98052
(425) 556-9055 x322
(425) 556-9099 FAX
==================================

On Jan 14, 2010, at 2:52 PM, bpoag at comcast.net wrote:

>
> The best drive destroyer is everyone's friend, dd.
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdwhatever bs=1048576
>
> This will fill your drive with zeros starting at byte 0, block 0,  
> sector 0, track zero, and burn nothing but zeros until the very end  
> of the platter.
> If you want to live in a fantasy CSI:Tucson world where scary  
> terrorists are out to steal your hard drives to look for things that  
> will help their plans on world domation, replace "zero" with  
> "random" up there. Your mouse movements will provide enough natural  
> entropy to keep the stream sufficiently pseudorandom, and deeply  
> annoying to the terrorists who wander our streets in search of  
> consumer-grade hard disks.
>
> But Arabs are great at math, you say? Perhaps so, they invented our  
> numbering system after all,, but you can get around that as well.  
> Just destroy the drive. You'll need a good pair of needle nose  
> pliers and a good sized hammer, but it only takes a few minutes to  
> crack one open and expose it to the elements. A few solid hammer  
> hits paying particular attention to the spindle, the platters, the  
> actuator, and the controller will certainly make any would-be  
> terrorist look for an easier path to martyrdom. There's some stuff  
> in the Qur'an about how to handle a meteorite, but nothing in the  
> Qur'an about hard drive repair.*
>
> Hope that helps.
> Cheers,
> Bowie
>
> * Ask a Muslim. Most of them hate terrorists too.