Darik's Boot and Nuke: A great tool for obliterating your data (NewsForge)

Posted Sep 30, 2005 14:07 UTC (Fri) by MortFurd (guest, #9389) [Link]

The tool itself sounds great. The article, on the other hand, comes across as rather unqualified.

As pointed out by posters in the NewsForge forum, the task actually accomplished could have been accomplished in a few seconds using fdisk. The author of the article did what is often referred to as driving a tack with a sledgehammer. Overwriting the entire drive and completely obliterating all data WILL get rid of the partition table that is confusing the various OS installers. It only takes and hour and a half, too. As opposed to using fdisk to delete just the partition table in a few seconds (minutes, if you have to read the fdisk man page.)

A more qualified discussion of the need for DBAN, and a test of how well it actually performs along with maybe some kind of information as to whether it is certified as actually upholding the standards it claims would have been much more interesting and of much more use for anyone who really needs this type of utility.

Personally, I don't trust any kind of software for 100% data obliteration. I prefer using a plasma cutter to slice the platters into 3/4 inch squares, and then having the remains sent up as scrap metal to be melted. It only takes a few minutes per drive, and doesn't tie up a PC. There's damned near zero chance of anything being recovered from the squares, and zero chance once the scrap has been recycled.