Wiping my hard drive

[AbeTrve]

I'm selling my old hardware, a system with a single HDD running Ubuntu MATE 15.10 and I don't really know how I could wipe it so the next person who uses it can't undelete stuff via photorec or any forensic software. Everything is already backed up to an external drive.

 

Maybe live booting TAILS has tools for such a task? Any other good practice tips before handing the hardware to the buyer?

[KraftDinner]

4 minutes ago, AbeTrve said:

I'm selling my old hardware, a system with a single HDD running Ubuntu MATE 15.10 and I don't really know how I could wipe it so the next person who uses it can't undelete stuff via photorec or any forensic software. Everything is already backed up to an external drive.

 

Maybe live booting TAILS has tools for such a task? Any other good practice tips before handing the hardware to the buyer?

Overwrite it about 3-5 times to be safe. This will re-write every single sector with 1's and 0's to ensure that old data is not recoverable

[AbeTrve]

1 minute ago, KraftDinner said:

Overwrite it about 3-5 times to be safe. This will re-write every single sector with 1's and 0's to ensure that old data is not recoverable

So just installing a copy of Ubuntu a bunch of times will be enough?

[MeshFile]

I personally never sell any HDDs of mine. I'll secure delete it on a dying drive, but it will sit on a storage somewhere.

 

If you don't mind getting a new HDD to add on the hardware you're selling, get 500GB HDD for cheap.

[KraftDinner]

2 minutes ago, AbeTrve said:

So just installing a copy of Ubuntu a bunch of times will be enough?

There is actually a built in linux utility called shred, you can read this post right here and it will tell you how to overwrite your disk:

 

http://askubuntu.com/questions/17640/how-can-i-securely-erase-a-hard-drive

 

run that a few times

[MeshFile]

3 minutes ago, AbeTrve said:

So just installing a copy of Ubuntu a bunch of times will be enough?

No. Use something like CCleaner's drive wiper where verything gets overwritten, not just the free space.

[comicsansms]

Run boot and nuke. http://www.dban.org/download

It will take a couple hours, but all your data will be gone.

[AbeTrve]

I forgot to mention the drive has to be bootable after the procedure!

[Gachr]

I've used this: http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_wipe_a_hard_drive_clean_in_Linux

What do you mean by "bootable"?

[AbeTrve]

27 minutes ago, Gachr said:

I've used this: http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_wipe_a_hard_drive_clean_in_Linux

What do you mean by "bootable"?

That it retains the ability to install an OS on it instead of just destroying the data.

[Gachr]

29 minutes ago, AbeTrve said:

That it retains the ability to install an OS on it instead of just destroying the data.

I think this one will just destroy the data, I don't know since I did that before I RMA'd the drive... perhaps that destroyed it so they accepted my request You should be fine I think.