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martijnvanbrummelen / nwipe

nwipe secure disk eraser
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Add option to just verify the device is blank #126

Closed Legogizmo closed 5 years ago

Legogizmo commented 5 years ago

I think it would be useful to be able to check that a device has been blanked. So I am adding a new method called "verify", it will not write to the disk but instead just read it and verify that it is blank. I am in the process of testing it and should submit a pull request soon.

PartialVolume commented 5 years ago

Nice, that should prove useful !

On a similar subject I always wondered why we don't have an optional signature written to the disc at the completion of a wipe. This signature would be encrypted and written in the first and last 512 byte blocks of the drive and consist of the text... "Securely erased by nwipe v0.26 on 12/Nov/2019 by [login name]"

Then using a hex editor (or nwipe if that feature was added) you could always take a quick look at the first and last blocks. In regards to nwipe, it could verify the signatures were present and if there were any doubts about it being erased give you the option to do a full verify.

I'm not sure how useful a signature in the last and first blocks would be to anybody else but for me personally I would find it quite useful pulling a disc of the shelf and checking if and when I wiped it.