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Our Management told us we needed to wipe down some our drives, who knows why. We were told to delete certain documents and then backup the remaining files to a external medium, wipe then restore the remaining files.

I usually just use Dump/Restore to do backups as it works great and is very simple. I simply used rm() to delete the files, created a zeroed file to fill the drive, deleted that file, then did a level 0 dump to a external medium, did a secure-erase via the drives firmware and now am restoring.

Though I have to ask, since dump works with the inodes and filesystem, will there be a trace of the deleted files in the dump of the drive, possible any metadata or links left over? This seemed pretty important to management, so I don't want to let them down because of my archaic backup habits.

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    Sounds like they want you to be an accessory to their fraud.
    – chris
    Dec 9, 2009 at 20:56

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Are they asking you to help them do something illegal?

Be very careful. Ask for explicit documentation of what they've asked you to do. "I'm sorry -- that sounds a little complex -- could you send me some email describing exactly what you want me to do?" Do only and exactly what they ask.

If you can, talk to a lawyer about the situation. I'm not a lawyer but "I did what my boss asked me to do" may not be any kind of protection from whatever they're involved in.

As to the methods -- the tainted data will not be on the backup or the restored volume.

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  • +1 Basically what I was trying to get across, but better expressed :-) Dec 9, 2009 at 21:55
  • He's probably safe as long as he honestly doesn't know why they want teh files deleted, even if the company is doing something illegal
    – Jim B
    Dec 10, 2009 at 3:47
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Not an Answer, but...

That is a little scary. If that has anything to do with financial / client information, I would think twice about doing it, even at the cost of my job. Someone like Evan who knows more about the business side of things might be able to expand on this for you, I could be totally off.

Basically, if you have a bad feeling, might want to listen to it.

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  • Wonder if he works for SCO? ;)
    – retracile
    Dec 9, 2009 at 20:38
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Your method is ok, but more convoluted than I would do (fill the drive, eek, that's gonna potentially take a while) Are you aware of shred(1) ?

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  • scred is just a front end for dd or other methods no? Plus external wiping like using scred or dd, doesn't take care of the g-list and bad blocks. Executing a secure-erase command to the drives firmware, gets rid of absolutely everything.
    – Recursion
    Dec 9, 2009 at 20:29
  • i meant schred, sorry about that
    – Recursion
    Dec 9, 2009 at 20:43

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