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-   -   GParted Question (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/gparted-question-825008/)

ciao303 08-08-2010 09:27 PM
GParted Question
 
Im trying to exterminate any and every softwares'existence and its trace of existence from my HDD

so I burnt the GParted gparted-live-0.6.1-5.iso into a DVD (sourced from softpedia)

the question is, whats next?

AlucardZero 08-08-2010 09:42 PM
boot from it?

Within GParted you can delete partitions, but I don't believe you can actually wipe (overwrite) data. For that, you need a DBAN CD, or any Linux live CD and the 'shred' or 'dd' command.

linuxlover.chaitanya 08-09-2010 12:32 AM
PartedMagick can be a better choice for that. It should wipe out data which should almost be irrecoverable for a normal user.

Aquarius_Girl 08-09-2010 01:22 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ciao303 (Post 4060257)
the question is, whats next?
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/docs/...C/gparted.html
and
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry...es/gparted.htm
and
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/faq.php

Gparted and PartedMagic both *manage* harddisk partitions not any particular software, AFAIK.

linuxlover.chaitanya 08-09-2010 01:36 AM
PartedMagick is not a software but a compilation of different softwares for certain usages. PartedMagick in itself is not a software but a specialized operating system for disk management that can include disk partitioning, cloning, data backup, recovery and data shreding among others. It comes a live cd with small desktop environment.

ciao303 08-09-2010 01:48 AM
ok basically what I wanna do is forget all whats in the HDD, lay a mushroom cloud on that sucker and start anew....as if the HDD is brand spankin new...how do I do this?

Aquarius_Girl 08-09-2010 01:52 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ciao303 (Post 4060404)
ok basically what I wanna do is forget all whats in the HDD, lay a mushroom cloud on that sucker and start anew....as if the HDD is brand spankin new...how do I do this?
Read the links in Post number 4.

linuxlover.chaitanya 08-09-2010 02:04 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ciao303 (Post 4060404)
ok basically what I wanna do is forget all whats in the HDD, lay a mushroom cloud on that sucker and start anew....as if the HDD is brand spankin new...how do I do this?
http://partedmagic.com/

Download the image. Burn to disk. Boot from disk. Erase your data. That is it. Your drive is all as new. Without any data and completely formatted.
PS: Shredding the data could make it irrecoverable. Make sure you know what data you are deleting or have a backup of it.

crts 08-09-2010 03:15 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ciao303 (Post 4060404)
ok basically what I wanna do is forget all whats in the HDD, lay a mushroom cloud on that sucker and start anew....as if the HDD is brand spankin new...how do I do this?
Hi,

ok here is how I "nuke" my disks. Suppose, the disk you want wiped is /dev/sdb. Boot from any liveCD and then just issue:
Code:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M # This step is optional
Notice the third optional step. If you execute it or not depends on what you want to do further with that disk. If you want to encrypt it then do not perform it. Also make pay attention to the 'bs' option. If you choose the byte-size number too small the command will take longer to finish.
After the commands above have terminated you will have to recreate the disk label and partition table.

Be extremely careful with those commands. Make sure that there is no important data on the device. Better double or triple check that because after the commands finish no data will be recoverable.

ciao303 08-09-2010 10:26 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by crts (Post 4060457)
Hi,

ok here is how I "nuke" my disks. Suppose, the disk you want wiped is /dev/sdb. Boot from any liveCD and then just issue:
Code:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M # This step is optional
Notice the third optional step. If you execute it or not depends on what you want to do further with that disk. If you want to encrypt it then do not perform it. Also make pay attention to the 'bs' option. If you choose the byte-size number too small the command will take longer to finish.
After the commands above have terminated you will have to recreate the disk label and partition table.

Be extremely careful with those commands. Make sure that there is no important data on the device. Better double or triple check that because after the commands finish no data will be recoverable.
at the 'bs' option how big is a number should be to consider it minimally tolerable?

crts 08-09-2010 11:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ciao303 (Post 4061254)
at the 'bs' option how big is a number should be to consider it minimally tolerable?
Hi,

a while ago I have been experimenting with that number. From what I have observed, from 512 (Bytes) onwards there was no noticeable change in performance. But this might depend on the architecture. You can try to find that lower boundary for your system. 512 is a good starting point.
Some stats for my system:
Code:
copying from /dev/urandom:
bs    average speed
64    4.3 MB/s
128    4.9 MB/s
512    5.6 MB/s
4096  5.8 MB/s

copying from /dev/zero:
bs    average speed
64    29.1 MB/s
128    40.8 MB/s
512    37.0 MB/s
4096  37.4 MB/s
The commands ran for approx. 30 seconds. As a rule of thumb, you might want to choose a bigger number if you have more data to copy. E. g. abort the command with bs set to 128 after 2 seconds and you will get a speed somewhere near 60 MB/s. This drops drastically if you let the command run for a minute. Maybe you can post some of your stats when you run the command.
Hope this helps.

[EDIT]:
Since we are talking about erasing HDD of several GB I recommend using a value of at least 4096. I choose 1M to be on the safe side.

linuxlover.chaitanya 08-10-2010 12:49 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sms2everyone (Post 4061360)
Thanks to Everyone..
Nice useful Information,it really helped me a lot,
I request every member that..
Please keep updating this site with there knowledge as Now i am regular visitor of this site.
If you have nothing informational to share, will you please stop spamming the threads with this signature post of yours.

EricTRA 08-10-2010 12:53 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by linuxlover.chaitanya (Post 4061401)
If you have nothing informational to share, will you please stop spamming the threads with this signature post of yours.
Already reported him, awaiting actions from the mods to block this spammer.

linuxlover.chaitanya 08-10-2010 12:59 AM
Yup. Me too reported couple of his posts. There are bulk of those. Impossible to report all. Is there a way to directly contact a moderator to report such spam?

Aquarius_Girl 08-10-2010 01:04 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by linuxlover.chaitanya (Post 4061410)
Yup. Me too reported couple of his posts. There are bulk of those. Impossible to report all. Is there a way to directly contact a moderator to report such spam?
You can ask the moderator to look here http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...eryone-536776/ in the statistics TAB and delete all his posts !!

Aquarius_Girl 08-10-2010 01:06 AM
[off-topic]

Seeing his posting speed, it seems he'll soon become a "senior member" :D and you must see LQ Spy right now !!

[/off-topic]

ciao303 08-10-2010 01:08 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by crts (Post 4061277)
Hi,

a while ago I have been experimenting with that number. From what I have observed, from 512 (Bytes) onwards there was no noticeable change in performance. But this might depend on the architecture. You can try to find that lower boundary for your system. 512 is a good starting point.
Some stats for my system:
Code:
copying from /dev/urandom:
bs    average speed
64    4.3 MB/s
128    4.9 MB/s
512    5.6 MB/s
4096  5.8 MB/s

copying from /dev/zero:
bs    average speed
64    29.1 MB/s
128    40.8 MB/s
512    37.0 MB/s
4096  37.4 MB/s
The commands ran for approx. 30 seconds. As a rule of thumb, you might want to choose a bigger number if you have more data to copy. E. g. abort the command with bs set to 128 after 2 seconds and you will get a speed somewhere near 60 MB/s. This drops drastically if you let the command run for a minute. Maybe you can post some of your stats when you run the command.
Hope this helps.

[EDIT]:
Since we are talking about erasing HDD of several GB I recommend using a value of at least 4096. I choose 1M to be on the safe side.
goddamn...didnt know commandline is THAT resource sensitive...

EricTRA 08-10-2010 01:10 AM
Looks like our mods are still sleeping :-) Wake up call! Calling all mods! Spammer is taking over LQ Spy!

linuxlover.chaitanya 08-10-2010 01:12 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by EricTRA (Post 4061475)
Looks like our mods are still sleeping :-) Wake up call! Calling all mods! Spammer is taking over LQ Spy!
I hope they are not. That *** spam bot has posted over 100 posts in a day. Can we somehow automate postings here at LQ?

EricTRA 08-10-2010 01:16 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by linuxlover.chaitanya (Post 4061479)
I hope they are not. That *** spam bot has posted over 100 posts in a day. Can we somehow automate postings here at LQ?
AFAIK there's no way to automate posting in LQ, but of course there are various ways to do so from the outside using bot like techniques, scripting and such, but itt's against the LQ Rules to explain further ;)

Kind regards,

Eric

Aquarius_Girl 08-10-2010 01:19 AM
The bot's tired right now, it seems, after a lot of hard work, must be gasping for breath :D

AlucardZero 08-10-2010 06:16 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ciao303 (Post 4061470)
goddamn...didnt know commandline is THAT resource sensitive...
Huh? What does the command line have to do with it? And what do you expect when you use dd, magic?

ciao303 08-10-2010 04:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlucardZero (Post 4061734)
Huh? What does the command line have to do with it? And what do you expect when you use dd, magic?
I suppose you wont be saying the same thing that I've said had it been MS-DOS


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