Safely deleting data

CLEANUP

Article from Issue 64/2006

Author(s): MARCUS NASAREK

Backups are a common topic, but you’ll hardly hear anyone mention safe data deletion.

Your old hard disk is full up to the brim with data, and you are thinking about buying a new disk. To reduce the impact on your family budget, you decide to sell the old hard disk via one of the many online auction sites. In the course of time, your whole family will have left personal traces on the disk – and of course, you would prefer to remove personal documents, letters, dismissal notices, applications, photo albums, and access credentials from the disk. Luckily, you have Linux, and a one-liner at the command line is all it takes at a pinch.

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