[SOLVED] Securely delete files?

[TTIO]

What would a good program be for securely deleting large amounts of files?
I understand I can use shred for individual files or directories, but is there anything better for whole HDD wipes?

Preferably as a live disk or something, but it doesn't have to be. I can always swap HDDs into a spare computer...

[oz]

but is there anything better for whole HDD wipes?

Preferably as a live disk or something, but it doesn't have to be.

Check out the Parted Magic LiveCD. It has three or four nice but different secure erase methods for drives included:

Parted Magic LiveCD

Parted Magic - Programs

[Rubberman]

In the gnu coreutils package there is a shred command that will pretty much do everything you need to erase and optionally delete a file. There are caveats, and the man page states what those are pretty clearly.

[Lakshmipathi]

Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

[TTIO]

Parted Magic and DBAN look like exactly what I'm looking for, thanks

@RubberMan: I know about shred, but I don't particularly want something that relies on the system itself. I'm giving old computers to people who don't have any - for education and the like - and I just want to wipe the hard drive before I put anything on there, in case the previous owners had any sensitive data. I could take the hard drives out and put them into another computer which has Linux installed and then use shred, but any live disk is so much simpler

Thanks, guys

[oz]

Parted Magic and DBAN look like exactly what I'm looking for, thanks

The Parted Magic LiveCD includes Nwipe, so that should work out quite well, then:

Nwipe - Andywiki