incremental disk wipe?

[rikona]

Hello Karl,

Saturday, March 7, 2015, 11:40:19 PM, Karl wrote:

> On Sun, 2015-03-08 at 15:22 +1100, blind Pete wrote:
>> Some disk manufactures claim that all data on the platter is encrypted 
>> with a random key and that secure deletion only requires changing 
>> the key.  I'm not sure that I would trust them to get it right, but it 
>> should be very quick and even take care of data on re-allocated 
>> sectors.  
>> Have a look at "man hdparm".  

> If you use hdparm, be extremely careful what you do. Double check every
> command, ideally get someone else to check it too.

> Misuse of hdparm can cause major data loss, or even render your hard
> disk permanently (yes, permanently) unusable.

It looked risky to me too not knowing much about it. Thanks for the
info - I'll stick with less risky methods. It looks like I can do
about 800 MB/min to the USB2 disk, so it will take a while even doing
it in chunks. No rush though, so that's OK.

Again, thanks to all for the help!

-- 

 rikona