Re: OT: password etc removal

On Apr 2, 10:51 am, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealm...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:36:33 -0700 (PDT)) it happened
mrdarr...@xxxxxxxxx wrote in
<6ba91552-0950-4e2f-a1d5-da1234a89...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

Free, from a Linux live CD:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

I would think trice before doing that.
It will overwrite the boot sector, the partition table, _everything_.
And it need not be mounted either.

If hda1 is the for example the partition in question, then, as root,
 dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda1
would overwrite _everything_ on that partition, ALSO the OS.

Would the person not only want to erase his own files, and not the whole system?


Ah, I misunderstood the OP. I thought he wanted to wipe his sensitive
files _and then_ install a new OS (or reinstall his old one).

Caveat emptor. (It's free anyway.)

Michael
.

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