[plug] HDD Erasure

[Denis Brown]

At 10:26 AM 13/11/2005, bob wrote:
>On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:46, Aaron Wooten wrote:
> > Hi Chris, you may want to have a read of "Secure Deletion of Data from
> > Magnetic and Solid-State Memory" By Peter Gutmann

There is Heidi Eraser for Widows (www.heidi.ie/eraser) which has a 
component that produces a "nuke boot disk" and options for the level of 
erasure - number of passes, algorithms and suchlike.   We have been using 
that (albeit in a Windows environment) successfully for several years for 
shredding sensitive (i.e. medical) data.   Has canned algorithms for 35 
passes of Gutmann as well as faster modes that apparently still satisfy US 
DoD standards.

If nuking a disk for disposal though (in a previously-Windows machine) the 
boot disk should address the issues others (Bob?) have raised with file 
system erasure in-place.

HTH,
Denis