disk_wiper/README.md

# disk_wiper

a disk wiper since shred is "lentoinculo" on some machines

with this the old machine has achieved ~100MB/s instead of shred's ~10MB/s

this should be somewhat less secure than shred's better randomness, but at least the random seed is changed at every pass of random wiping, which for my use case is acceptable.

this should not give you peace of mind regarding the complete wipe of your disks,
this is more a "decommissioning" tool for old disks that could be reused in other scenarios and need to be wiped.

if you are after complete certainty of data removal from your drives then it's better to get going with the power drill, grinder and the very big hammer, for more info on how the GCHQ would achieve that: https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2015-6799-how_to_destroy_a_laptop_with_top_secrets


### usage:

```
./wiper.sh sdb
```

in case you want to override the disk health check to wipe a broken disk:

```
./wiper.sh sdb --override
```


### features:

* checks if disk has errors, in that case instructs you to physically destroy it poiting to the Model and Serial numbers to best identify the drive
* checks if disk is an SSD (see TODO) and reminds you the dangers of SSD's flash reallocation
* differentiate between SAS and SATA to retrieve the correct data
* uses openssl to provide randomness (faster)
* has a nice progress bar for the shredding and zeroing with timing of the current operation
* automatically installs it's prerequisites (pv, smartmontools and hdparm)

### pre-requisites:

- smartmontools
- pv

```
apt install pv smartmontools
```

### TODO:

- [ ] check ATA Secure Erase for SSDs
- [x] needs testing with SATA drives
- [x] needs testing with broken SATA drives
- [ ] needs testing with SSDs
- [x] broaden the platforms for prerequisites installation (at least yum)

### quotes:

"[some] disks don't fail, they just break"