[ale] Need an iso to wipe hard drives.

[dmcnash at charter.net (Doug McNash)]

---- Chris Fowler <cfowler at outpostsentinel.com> wrote: 
> I also used to have a program that I wrote which would open a file for
> RW and fill it with random stuff.  If would seek back to the beginning
> and repeat a few times then close and finally delete.

Unless this file is much bigger than the RAM used for file buffer caching (which on linux is quite a large percentage) not much is actually being written to the magnetic media unless you do a sync, fsync or unmount the drive. I wouldn't trust the syncs as much as I would the unmount (gauxrunteed) but that is just me. (I would also flush the hardware disk cache.) Laptops are worse in this behavior as they are configured to write to the magnetic media as little as possible. 

If your going to be paranoid, at least be obsessive-compulsive about it.

--
doug mcnash