OT: Can Reformatting A Hard Drive To ext3 Destroy All the Data On It?

[Sharpe, Sam J]

2009/5/29 Alan Cox <alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>:
>> 'shred' is part of coreutils (i.e. installed by default).
>> Doing something like
>>
>> shred /dev/sdX
>>
>> as root will write various bit patterns 25 times over the entire drive
>> (see the man page for more options).
>
> Whoopeeedoo. Thats still not the correct way to erase a disk.
>
> Use security erase, that is why it is there.

I use a hammer, because it wins over all other solutions on both ease
of use and catharsis.

-- 
Sam