disk erase of dual boot system

[Eberhard Roloff]

Geoffrey Bays wrote:
> I have an older Windows XP/Mandrake 9.2 dual boot system which I want
> to donate with a fresh install of
> *buntu 8.10, but I need to do a thorough disk erase first.
> 
> Most of the data is on the Win partition, and there are tools like
> Eraser to do this.But they won't handle the ext3(?) file system of
> Mandrake.
> 
> Anyone know of a good linux tool that can blitz both partitions and
> file systems, that I could use from the Mandrake
> partition?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Geoffrey Bays
> 
I would simply repartion and then format during the install.

If this is not sufficiently save, you can always overwrite your 
partitions with Zeroes.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx

The german authorities imho recomend to do this a few times, if you 
absolutely want to erase your disks contents and practically prevent any 
data to be recovered. ( I do not know how other countries and 
authorities consider this)

regards
Eberhard