Darik's Boot 'n Nuke

[yesthattom]

Need to throw away or sell 500 or so PCs? Don't want the buyer to be able to read the data from the hard disk?

Darik's Boot 'n' Nuke is a mini-Linux distro (image for Floppy and CD-ROM). You boot on it, it erases every disk on the computer. You get one chance to say, "No, I didn't mean to do it."

I tried a package called "Autoclave" but this was much faster and betterer.

Plus, "Boot 'N Nuke" is a much better name.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/dban/

Comments

[airshipjones.livejournal.com]

Does it meet NSA and IEEE standards for data deletion? I'm not usually that worried, but some of my clients with financial data can be pretty picky about stuff like that.

On a not quite related topic, have you looked at the Mirra back-up device (check out mirra.com)? It is a small linux box with client that allows back-up and remote data access. I haven't seen anything wrong with the concept of it (except no off-site removable storage), and the one client that has one is quite please with it.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

What IEEE standard? What NSA standard? I've never seen those. I've seen DoD guidelines and specific branch standards (which mostly recommend destruction and degaussing, though USAF recommends triple overwrite on a "case by case" basis), but no NSA or IEEE standards at all. Indeed, IEEE papers on data erasure don't mention any IEEE standard. I even vaguely recall an article about all those oft-cited standards being urban legends.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

It supports one DoD recommendation, a RCMP recommendation, and three home-grown ones. Each takes a different amount of time.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I'm interested, because the DoD policy is really vague and generally recommends slagging the material. The different branches have their own standards, which still generally don't specify how to overwrite (except USAF, which does). Does the author cite any actual documents? There's a *ton* of recycled urban legend in the disk wiping "standards" discussions. The DoD one commonly cited -- 5220.22-M -- has no recommendation on how to do overwriting.

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

Of course you could always just run Outlook for a week. There are thousands of viruses waiting to wipe your hard disks, too. ;)

[cloacabutt.livejournal.com]

There are lots of organizations that would be happy to receive your slightly outdated PCs as a tax-deductible donation. Check around wherever you are (VT?). For example, there's a cool art program in Phila. that reconditions old Macs.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Yup. This is in preparation for such a donation. :-)

[maxdwolf.livejournal.com]

Company I'm working for has a contract w. a govt. agency (civilian) to erase a number of hard drives. They're requiring us to do it with magnets.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

I was wondering why that hadn't come up. I guess it's too time-consuing to take each drive out, unless you think you really have to.

[maxdwolf.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that it's costing MUCH more than Boot'n'Nuke. Thing is, it's data of such little value that I can't see a hostile nation or greedy corporation going to any trouble to retrieve it. So the whole thing strikes me as overkill. Oh well.