The investigator can't use the same hard drive for two different hard drives if they are using the duplication way to image the hard drive. This could overlap different files from different cases and will result in unreliable and untrue findings. After completing work on the duplicate hard drive, you must wipe it and prepare it for another case or hard drive. Don't wait until another case is assigned to you; wiping takes a long time.
This process is equivalent to the imaging process but the source file is a file full of zeros. In the Linux operating system there is a /dev/zero
file. You need to use this file as your input file to the dd
tool, and your output file will be the hard drive that needs to be wiped. Another file that can be used in this process as well is/dev/null
:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=2K conv=noerror,sync