Re: [LUG] Disk Wiping

[John PNZ <jh.pcgb@xxxxxxxxx>]

I think, comrade, that some people rely on physical barriers for data protection rather than adopting encryption at rest, but that they prefer to wipe before giving a drive to another user. That seems a supportable concept.

I agree with Gordon that multipass is pointless these days.

As for sectors being spared or remapped, clearing down the spared sectors is probably why using the pita internal wipe is the top option: if anything can wipe spared space it will be there. SSDs remap continuously to minimize wear of individual sectors over the lifetime of the drive but I'm pretty sure a full-drive wipe of /dev/sdx destroys the content of all remapped spaces. Similarly, anything short of full-drive or full-partition wipes might miss journaled areas and they can be extensive, but the full wipe will cover all of that.

On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 17:33, comrade meowski <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 04/03/2021 17:12, David Bell wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 16:30:53 +0000 (GMT)
> Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> I find a big log splitter works wonders.
>
> Thanks Gordon,
>
> I did try once, using a 2lb club hammer and a 1" cold chisel long ago.
> The chisel bent in the process! But I'll keep a lookout for a 2nd hand
> log splitter in the meantime.
>
> However, I don't want to destroy the disks. My data is purely personal
> files. (no passwords), so I'll sleep easy with just a software wipe.


You guys have got some very, very weird ideas about threat models...

Is this where we find out by any chance that although you're not
encrypting your computer drives at rest you think that it's important to
secure wipe if not physically destroy your retired drives?

Hmmm.

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