Question : delete/reformat linux server

I'm moving to a new dedicated server at a new hosting company.

On my old server, how is the best way to delete all the data on the harddrive before I turn it back over to the hosting company?  It doesn't have to be super shredded and totally unrecoverable, but I feel like I should clean it up and make sure no one accidently ends up with my stuff when someone else gets the server (I'm sure the hosting company will reinstall, but just to be on the safe side...)

Thanks,  Chris

Answer : delete/reformat linux server

If you have physical access ... boot off a Linux distro CD like knoppix   and run shred  on the hard drive device /dev/hda or whatever.


If remote... you can shred individual files, but that still leaves information on unused disk blocks.    So..one possibility is to remove as much as you using shred on individual files, then  create a large file

dd if=/dev/zero of=/garbage bs=$((1024*1024))

then shred the /garbage file.    The /garbage file will have zeros in it initially, but if someone really wanted to they could recover the information that was stored on it before.... If you're paranoid, shred as well.