Comment on What is the best way to safely and completely erase all data from old laptops?
someguy3@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Boot off a USB drive with Linux and simply format the drive. Not a quick format, you may have to unselect that.
Then donate the laptops. Donation place should be able to install Linux. Most people don’t need much laptop.
Knusper@feddit.de 6 months ago
Hmm, what does that full format do? Write zeros over everything?
Personally, I would run
shredon the root filesystem. It’s a tool specifically intended for properly deleting data (overwrites it with random data multiple times).otp@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Even writing 0’s takes hours per TB sometimes. Guess it depends on how much time you have
Knusper@feddit.de 6 months ago
It took maybe 10 minutes or so for a 256 GB hard drive for me, if I remember correctly.
That was an SSD, though, so yeah, mileage would definitely vary on an HDD.
someguy3@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yes.