How to destroy all the data from server for decommission?

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Entreprise Linux (RHEL) 4.8 and later
  • Red Hat Entreprise Linux (RHEL) 5
  • Red Hat Entreprise Linux (RHEL) 6
  • Red Hat Entreprise Linux (RHEL) 7

Issue

  • There are servers about to be decommissioned, how do I delete all of the data securely?
  • How do I remove/delete a file securely?
  • How to securely delete a file so that it cannot be read
  • How to wipe out the complete data and OS in the RHEL 5.9

Resolution

  • It is vital to understand that here is no procedure that will be 100% sure to destroy your data on software level.
    The only 100% sure solution would be to physically damage storage device (hard disk).

  • However there is reasonably safe solution on software level, details below:

      # nohup shred -n 25 -f -z /dev/[HDD]

  • This command will overwrite all data on /dev/[HDD] repeatedly, in order to make it harder for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data. Command line parameter -z will overwrite this device with zeros at the end of cycle to re-write data 25 times (it can be overridden with -n [number]).

  • One should consider running this command from RescueCD.

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