If Gentoo can die off, ReiserFS is doomed (was Re: Reiser FS or ext3?)

[Monty J. Harder]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Leo Mauler <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --
>
> Reformatting a ReiserFS filesystem can sometimes result in data files from
> the previous contents reappearing on the now allegedly-wiped hard drive, a
> detail which folks interested in tax breaks for donating old machines, while
> simultaneously protecting their corporate secrets, would be dismayed to
> learn.
>

Anyone who thinks that "reformatting a filesystem" is the same thing as
"wiping a hard drive" doesn't understand the meanings of the words
"reformatting", "wiping", or "filesystem' for that matter.

You can reformat an ext*, FAT or NTFS filesystem, but if you think you've
"wiped" the filesystem, much less the drive, you are wrong beyond
description.  I can understand a non-technical user not understanding the
distinction between "reformatting' and "wiping", but anyone working for a
corporate IT department who can't tell them apart should be fired for
incompetence.

If I'm asked to "wipe" someone's drive, I'll boot to a live CD or USB drive,
get to a root prompt, and do something like

export pass=1
while [ $pass -lt 6 ]
 do
  printf '\nDrive Wipe Pass #%d' $pass
  dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda
  printf ' . '
  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
  printf ' . '
 pass=`expr $pass + 1`
done; printf '\nDONE.  You may now turn off the computer'

This is not a theoretical exercise for me.  I had a customer who was
retiring, and wanted to be sure all data was removed from the server before
it was delivered to the buyer.  Since it was SCO OpenServer, instead of
/dev/random, I used an outer loop of 3 passes with an inner loop that used
/dev/byte/55, /dev/byte/ff, /dev/byte/aa, and /dev/byte/00 (after first
creating the device nodes for 55 and aa), so that the entire HD was written
to a dozen times, with the different patterns.  At that point, I figured
that there were maybe some guys at Langley (and their Russian and Chinese
counterparts) who would have even a chance of recovering data from that
drive.

I never referred to that operation as "(re)formatting".
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