Clearing Old PC's

Cryptographic_ICE · External Since: Jul 25, 2007 Posts: 1

Hello,

I'm interested in creating a boot disk that will "Wipe" the current
hard-drive and create a single Fat32 partition. My company is selling
100 or so PC's that need to be wiped and I'm looking for the easiest
way to do that. The computers have floppy drives, Cd-Roms and I think
they support PXE boot. Would there be an easy way to install a Linux
distro at the same time? (Perhaps Multicasting / PXE boot??) Any help
is appreciated.

CptDondo · External Since: Oct 05, 2005 Posts: 309

Cryptographic_ICE RemoveThis @yahoo.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm interested in creating a boot disk that will "Wipe" the current
> hard-drive and create a single Fat32 partition. My company is selling
> 100 or so PC's that need to be wiped and I'm looking for the easiest
> way to do that. The computers have floppy drives, Cd-Roms and I think
> they support PXE boot. Would there be an easy way to install a Linux
> distro at the same time? (Perhaps Multicasting / PXE boot??) Any help
> is appreciated.
>

Boot off a live cd, then dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda ???

That would pretty much wipe out the entire disk.

Why create a fat32 partition? Just leave it trashed.

Creating partitions takes time; so does installing distros. Just give
away a copy of mepis/knoppix/ubuntu/fill_in_the_blank distro.

--Yan

notbob · External Since: Jun 08, 2004 Posts: 759

On 2007-07-25, Cryptographic_ICE.RemoveThis@yahoo.com <Cryptographic_ICE.RemoveThis@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm interested in creating a boot disk that will "Wipe" the current
> hard-drive and create a single Fat32 partition.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-5083573.html

nb

The Natural Philosopher · External Since: Jul 09, 2004 Posts: 802

Cryptographic_ICE.TakeThisOut@yahoo.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm interested in creating a boot disk that will "Wipe" the current
> hard-drive and create a single Fat32 partition. My company is selling
> 100 or so PC's that need to be wiped and I'm looking for the easiest
> way to do that. The computers have floppy drives, Cd-Roms and I think
> they support PXE boot. Would there be an easy way to install a Linux
> distro at the same time? (Perhaps Multicasting / PXE boot??) Any help
> is appreciated.
>
Fdisk?

Oh you mean REALLY wipe.. isn't there a version of Format that does a
sector by sector low level format?

I'd boot/run something like that with a really old version of DOS. Or
something like 'disk doctor'

Stefan Patric · External Since: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 153

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:09:11 -0700, Cryptographic_ICE wrote:

> I'm interested in creating a boot disk that will "Wipe" the current
> hard-drive and create a single Fat32 partition. My company is selling
> 100 or so PC's that need to be wiped and I'm looking for the easiest way
> to do that. The computers have floppy drives, Cd-Roms and I think they
> support PXE boot. Would there be an easy way to install a Linux distro
> at the same time? (Perhaps Multicasting / PXE boot??) Any help is
> appreciated.

The easiest method for a true security "wipe" is to use Darik's Boot and
Nuke (DBAN) floppy (http://dban.sourceforge.net/). You can pick from
about 6 or so various wipes from relatively fast to agonizingly slow up
to the ultimate wipe, which makes 7 passes with various bit patterns to
thoroughly destroy all data. DBAN is a single bootable floppy Linux
system that loads onto a ram disk and runs in a terminal. I use it all
the time to securely wipe old hard drives before I sell or give them away.

As far as formatting the HD FAT32 or any filesystem for that matter at
the same time, that would be a separate operation. One that is not
included on the DBAN floppy. However, you could use DBAN as a foundation
(or any pre-packaged floppy based Linux system like Tom's Root Boot
(http://www.toms.net/rb/) and modify it to suit your purposes making the
process automatic with a boot script. Just insert the floppy, turn on
the computer, walk away, and come back in a few minutes when everything
is done.

Other simple wipes of hard drives can be accomplish with dd (for example,
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hda, which is very fast, or if=/dev/random of=/
dev/hda, etc. or calling badblocks, which checks a hard drive for bad
blocks, directly using the "destructive" -w option. This option is
pretty fast as well as thorough making 4 passes writing and reading 4
test patterns (0xaa, 0x55, 0xff, 0x00). Kinda a poor man's DBAN.

Good Luck...

Stef

General Schvantzkoph · External Since: Dec 29, 2004 Posts: 1199

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:09:11 -0700, Cryptographic_ICE wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm interested in creating a boot disk that will "Wipe" the current
> hard-drive and create a single Fat32 partition. My company is selling
> 100 or so PC's that need to be wiped and I'm looking for the easiest way
> to do that. The computers have floppy drives, Cd-Roms and I think they
> support PXE boot. Would there be an easy way to install a Linux distro
> at the same time? (Perhaps Multicasting / PXE boot??) Any help is
> appreciated.

You could use badblocks to do the wipe. badblocks -w will overwrite
everything. Use a live CD to do the job.

Guy Macon · External Since: Jan 28, 2005 Posts: 169

Cryptographic_ICE.TakeThisOut@yahoo.com wrote:

>I'm interested in creating a boot disk that will "Wipe" the current
>hard-drive and create a single Fat32 partition. My company is selling
>100 or so PC's that need to be wiped and I'm looking for the easiest
>way to do that. The computers have floppy drives, Cd-Roms and I think
>they support PXE boot.

DBAN -- Darik's Boot and Nuke. It's the standard way to do this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darik's_Boot_and_Nuke
http://freshmeat.net/projects/dban/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_wiping

>Would there be an easy way to install a Linux distro at the same
>time? (Perhaps Multicasting / PXE boot??)

At the same time? Not really. Just nuke the hard drives and
install Linux as a second step using whatever method suits you.

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>

Adam Funk · External Since: Aug 08, 2007 Posts: 2

Guy Macon wrote:

> DBAN -- Darik's Boot and Nuke. It's the standard way to do this.

Does anyone know if this will work to wipe a SATA drive connected to a
PCI SATA card which is plugged into a motherboard that has IDE
jacks but no IDE drives connected?

Thanks,
Adam

Stefan Patric · External Since: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 153

On Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:14:06 +0100, Adam Funk wrote:

> Guy Macon wrote:
>
>> DBAN -- Darik's Boot and Nuke. It's the standard way to do this.
>
> Does anyone know if this will work to wipe a SATA drive connected to a
> PCI SATA card which is plugged into a motherboard that has IDE jacks but
> no IDE drives connected?

Why don't you just boot the DBAN disk and see?

Stef

Adam Funk · External Since: Aug 08, 2007 Posts: 2

On 2007-08-09, Stefan Patric wrote:

>>> DBAN -- Darik's Boot and Nuke. It's the standard way to do this.
>>
>> Does anyone know if this will work to wipe a SATA drive connected to a
>> PCI SATA card which is plugged into a motherboard that has IDE jacks but
>> no IDE drives connected?
>
> Why don't you just boot the DBAN disk and see?

I haven't bought the PCI SATA card yet!
Wink

Guy Macon · External Since: Jan 28, 2005 Posts: 169

Adam Funk wrote:
>
>Stefan Patric wrote:
>
>>>> DBAN -- Darik's Boot and Nuke. It's the standard way to do this.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know if this will work to wipe a SATA drive connected to a
>>> PCI SATA card which is plugged into a motherboard that has IDE jacks but
>>> no IDE drives connected?
>>
>> Why don't you just boot the DBAN disk and see?
>
>I haven't bought the PCI SATA card yet!

It may not boot at all. It all depends on whether the BIOS
is capable of seeing and booting to that configuration.

Worst case, put in a small/cheap IDE drive to boot off of.

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>

Stefan Patric · External Since: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 153

On Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:25:13 +0100, Adam Funk wrote:

> On 2007-08-09, Stefan Patric wrote:
>
>>>> DBAN -- Darik's Boot and Nuke. It's the standard way to do this.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know if this will work to wipe a SATA drive connected to a
>>> PCI SATA card which is plugged into a motherboard that has IDE jacks
>>> but no IDE drives connected?
>>
>> Why don't you just boot the DBAN disk and see?
>
> I haven't bought the PCI SATA card yet! Wink

Oh!

My guess is: if Linux recognizes it (DBAN runs under a mini-Linux
system), DBAN can access it. However, if that fails, boot a Linux Live
CD and run badblocks -w on the drive. The -w switch enables a
destructive write (and a corresponding read) to the drive of 4
hexadecimal patterns to search and map out bad blocks. Not as goods as
the 7 patterns that DBAN uses, but good enough for all but the most
sophisticated data recovery systems.

Stef

julie-d · Joined: Aug 25, 2008 Posts: 4

The best way would be to use fdisk. To find a boot disk for Fat32 I would check with bootdisk.com for a suitable file. Good luck.