[PLUG] Disk wiping utility?

[Matt McKenzie]

On Jan 28, 2008 3:03 PM, Kristian Erik Hermansen <
kristian.hermansen at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 28, 2008 2:53 PM, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> >    Of course, any time you repartition (unless you use a tool like
> > PartitionMagic), data are wiped out.
>
> Data is not wiped even if you use gparted on most Linux installers.
> You can even resize NTFS without losing data.  The partition may be
> altered/resized/deleted, but the data is still there of course :-)
> --
>

Exactly.  The repartitioning step just rewrites the partition table.
It is the next step, in most installers, that formats the selected
partitions.
Granted if you alter the partition table, it can make it more difficult to
get to the data, but it is still there if you know how to get to it.

Depending on the tool used, you can usually tell the installer to format
/dev/sd[x] and not format /dev/sd[y], for example in my case I have a
separate /home partition that I don't format when upgrading/reinstalling.  I
just did this recently when installing Fedora 8 fresh over F7.  Going from
F6 -> F7 I did an upgrade, and it got a little messy, mainly because of
using livna 3rd party repository.

In the OP's case you would just set all the partitions to format, and it
would've "wiped" the old data, though not to DoD standards.
It sounds like the OP wanted to accomplish 2 things here- wipe out Windowz,
and learn about data wiping tools.  So mission accomplished, it sounds
like?  Tell us how the SuSE install goes.

-- 
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Matt M.
LinuxKnight