Fdisk screwup

[Bill Davidsen]

Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Sat, 9 May 2009 08:02:22 -0500
> Dave Ihnat wrote:
> 
>> Hmm...just curious; why didn't you just cat /dev/zero >/dev/sdc?
> 
> I don't think cat knows when to stop.
> 
> I always use dd to restrict it to a few disk blocks - I find that
> wiping the first 10K or so usually gets enough to make the disk
> look blank, and doesn't take as long as wiping the whole disk.
> (Of course if you are going for security, you might want to wipe
> the whole disk).
> 
If you want security you go for zeros to avoid reading something eveil. If you 
don't want to share your data with something evel, dban is your friend, although 
somewhat overkill for flash, which I suspect has a lot less memory than magnetic 
media.

Definitely what you do before scrapping old drives.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot