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Say goodbye to the iMac.
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I'm guessing it's me and 10 web crawlers. |
DBAN gives you a few options for wiping a disk, depending on how paranoid you are. You can pick the source of entropy, the Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG), how many passes, and whether to verify the passes. A lot of options for formatting a disk: had I designed the DBAN interface, I'd have just specified paranoid, ultra paranoid, Fox Mulder, Security Architet, Fox News Anchor.
I chose a DoD 5220.22-M (aka "DoD short") wipe which is fancy terminology for overwriting the contents of the disk with random information three times, and verifying that the write completed successfully. I used the default Mersenne Twister PRNG, which is a fancy system for ensuring that the random numbers are indeed random, and not just the number nine.
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A random Dilbert comic. |
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The data will become irrecoverable...BECAUSE THE DISK WILL HAVE DIED BEFORE THE WIPE IS COMPLETE. |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjg-Nd97io6KnOb9zLh77EYrDx5eRhNszgeMq2Mlrea6j8GddTpQTvPpMbFwKEupFTyU4VYmUrYbOQn6WdhxpV_7Efb_UPUM1yxObk4muCh8z-hgrE6Odgnd0vt9ttLZxdIg_0GMfv9fU/s640/mac3.png)
And good things come to those who wait. According to the hardware clock powered by a dead battery, the year is now 1956 and I have spent negative 56 years waiting for the wipe to complete. Forget saying hello to the iMac: say hello to the UNIVAC.