On Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 11:31:07PM -0500, David Wright wrote: > I'm about to install buster or bullseye on a newly acquired laptop > with an SSD (a first for me). I'm intending to clean (zero or > randomise) the entire drive with dd before I start, and am > interested in any pitfalls with that. > Don't bother - as others have said, it won't help particularly _especially_ since this is an NVME. Enjoy the speed :)
> I will also encrypt the new /home partition, but for the remaining > partitions I need to decide whether to add mount's discard option, > or use a weekly systemd trim, or leave it entirely up to the garbage > collection in the SSD device itself (which is an nvme THNSN5512GPUK > TOSHIBA, presumably an OEM model supplied for this HP Spectre). > Just install Debian with an expert install: use the guided partitioning for encrypted LVM and set /home as a separate partition. > The machine has 16GB of memory, so I wasn't intending to use swap. > (It won't have to hibernate, and if push came to shove, there's > always the possibility of setting up a swapfile or a ramdisk.) > If you install bullseye, the swap file is only 1G anyway (changed default for Bullseye). > Background: > > The July 2017 system was pre-installed with Windows 10. > > I have copied the entire disk to external spinning rust, and can > mount partitions from this image. It's difficult to foresee my ever > wanting to reload and run this Windows system. > > The drive has unencrypted information on it, either in existing files, > or in deleted/overwritten/whatever ones (though I think that is > irrelevant to the method for erasing them). > If you really do want to erase older spinning rust, DBAN is probably good enough - but in many cases just doing a couple of installs of Debian over the top may be enough :) > I don't work for the CIA**, so "basic" erasure methods are sufficient, > ie so-called logical and digital sanitisation, but not analogue > sanitisation/purging. I'm just encrypting stuff like personal bank > records etc, and not looking for anything like plausible deniability. > > Cheers, > David. > Just my €0.02 - all best, as ever, Andy C. ** You mentioned the CIA: As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn't there He wasn't there again today I *think* he's from the CIA