Our Management told us we needed to wipe down some our drives, who knows why. We were told to delete certain documents and then backup the remaining files to a external medium, wipe then restore the remaining files.
I usually just use Dump/Restore to do backups as it works great and is very simple. I simply used rm() to delete the files, created a zeroed file to fill the drive, deleted that file, then did a level 0 dump to a external medium, did a secure-erase via the drives firmware and now am restoring.
Though I have to ask, since dump works with the inodes and filesystem, will there be a trace of the deleted files in the dump of the drive, possible any metadata or links left over? This seemed pretty important to management, so I don't want to let them down because of my archaic backup habits.
Not an Answer, but...
That is a little scary. If that has anything to do with financial / client information, I would think twice about doing it, even at the cost of my job. Someone like Evan who knows more about the business side of things might be able to expand on this for you, I could be totally off.
Basically, if you have a bad feeling, might want to listen to it.
Are they asking you to help them do something illegal?
Be very careful. Ask for explicit documentation of what they've asked you to do. "I'm sorry -- that sounds a little complex -- could you send me some email describing exactly what you want me to do?" Do only and exactly what they ask.
If you can, talk to a lawyer about the situation. I'm not a lawyer but "I did what my boss asked me to do" may not be any kind of protection from whatever they're involved in.
As to the methods -- the tainted data will not be on the backup or the restored volume.
Your method is ok, but more convoluted than I would do (fill the drive, eek, that's gonna potentially take a while) Are you aware of
shred(1)?