On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Billy Naylor wrote: > Why pay money for something so simple ? > > #!/usr/bin/perl > # cleanse.pl > # Sets empty disk space to zero One problem is most Windows boxes don't have Perl. (I love Perl.. I have it on all MY Windows and Unix boxes, but thats just me) Another is that if you try that on a production NT server, once the disk gets full enough, it will cause any programs trying to write to disk to fail. It also does not erase the unallocated portions of the swap file. Also, don't run this program during your nightly backup! :-) Also if you are truly paranoid and want to wipe the disk out against any possibility of recovery, the Perl script is not enough as the drive can be taken apart and the data extracted unless you are VERY careful to run cryptographicly strong random numbers at the drive multiple times, making sure to also use patterns to toggle the bits the required number of times. If the security of a server is not worth $10, why even bother? :-) Now, on Unix if you are paranoid, you could modify the kernel source so that when a file is unlinked, it scrubs the sectors with random garbage before freeing the blocks. Not sure how massive a performance hit that would be though. -- IanSmithat_private Visit Below! My HP48/Imagine/ImageMaster/FractalExtreme Page --> www.ian.org The best baseball simulation on the market! --> www.imonkey.com
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