Trading my three year old PC for a bottle of whisky (or is it whiskey?) to a friend seems like a great deal. With several work-related files left on my computer, it felt like a great opportunity to try out a shredding tool. So I figured I’d just Google for the popular choice and try it out.
Then I got submerged in a whirlpool of information. Some folks linked to “non geek perspectives”, for example this article on 4 file shredder tools. Others gave walls of text on the technical details. I was in fact hoping to find some article on the Dutch hardware.info site on this topic. In the end the Stack Exchange site for “power users” gave me the most info through a dedicated file-shredding-tag.
And there, finally: a great list of shredding options! Options all around: bootable CDs, hidden Windows 7 tools, as well as a great post on Scott Hanselman’s blog. For some reason one of the answers with almost the least amount of answers caught my attention.
So I downloaded a bootable ISO of Ubuntu and fired it up. First I tried the “basic” suggestion:
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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M |
The terminal screen just sat there, with a blinking caret. Apparently I’d entered a staring contest. After some time I decided to hit the enter key a few times in the console: the caret moved. After a minute of pondering I tried CTRL+C: and the operation got cancelled. I’d lost the staring competition, that’s for sure.
Now, this staring contest had taken about one hour. So I decided to try the second suggestion:
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hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sdX |
No dice. Utterly confising console error messages. Since I’m mot quite a Linux guru like these guys, I did some more searching around. Finally I found some more detailed instructions on hdparm. First I had to unfreeze my drive, and I had to set a password (though I don’t quite grasp why). Then the moment of truth…
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sudo hdparm --user-master u --security-erase p /dev/sdX |
Ever since I’ve been in yet another staring contest with Ubuntu. Only this time I’m gonna win, or die trying!
Update: after over two hours the staring contest is over… and won! The console returns to normal. At first, it seems Ubuntu can still browse the drives. But, after a reboot, there is not a single file, folder or partition to be found anymore!