3 ms·
If that's in your threat model, fill the disk with random bytes. This works on the economic argument that if you could easily recover data from a disk that's b
by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
If that's in your threat model, fill the disk with random bytes.
This works on the economic argument that if you could easily recover data from a disk that's been rewritten, drive manufacturers would exploit that already to increase storage.
If your threat model includes attackers who bypass the firmware to read overwritten data, you are probably boned several other ways.
- augusto-moura 2y agoIt is usually quicker to just zero the disk instead of random bytes, just because the randomness pool might be scarce in a system. This can save hours when clearing a large and fast disk, like a SSD. /dev/zero usually has much more throughput than /dev/random. Of course this matters less on slow disks, where the bottleneck is the writing speeds anyway.
- glii 2y agoMany SSDs transform all-zero sector writes into a simple TRIM/DISCARD to reduce flash wear, so overwriting with pseudorandom data from /dev/urandom is likely more secure.