Linux Howto: wipe a hard drive

I have an old Sun UltraSparc server (Blade 1000).  I am getting rid of it and wanted to wipe the two 80GB Fiber-Channel (FC) disk drives.

Quick and easy method:

1. Download the System Rescue CD Sparc version, latest available here http://sourceforge.net/projects/systemrescuecd/files/sysresccd-sparc/0.4.0/systemrescuecd-sparc-0.4.0.iso/download (if you’re on a more recent platform, go here to download http://www.sysresccd.org/Download )
2. Power on the machine with the CD in the drive.  Alternately “Stop-A” and then type “boot cdrom”
3. Let the SystemRescueCD boot
4. Start the wiping with shred (man page should be on your Linux system; otherwise check here [gnu.org documentation site] ) by running this command:

   1. shred --verbose /dev/sda

5. Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get a 2nd console; run this command

   1. shred --verbose /dev/sdb

6. Wait patiently (I am, as I type this).  Default is 3 iterations of random data.

If this is helpful, let me know.