Jasen Betts wrote:
On 2015-10-30, Ian wrote:


While on the subject of software - I'm looking for an ISO for a bootable CD
with HDD wipe utilities.

So far my searches have only found demos and paid versions.

A guy at work swars by "dban" same dude also thinks spinrite is a good thing to
run on failing media, so take that with a grain of salt.

Personally I find the debian installer has enough (for non-paranoid
erasure), either by switching to the command-line or by selecting the
"overwrite" option during partitioning.

Err... I have found that SpinRite does indeed fix up a failing HD by
recovering "soft" bytes and "soft" sectors.
I was lax on one HD, which became unbootable and parts unreadable,
and was a challenge for SpinRite; it is now bootable and everything i
needed became available afterwords.
I had another HD with similar problems that i had to put in the
freezer for a while to make it readable for SpinRite; is perfectly good
and reliable now.
In fact,it is good to use SpinRite on a regular basis to keep a HD in
good shape.