Isn't that exactly what srm does? If you read the manual page for srm you'll see that by default it uses a 35 pass Gutmann algorithm for securely deleting the file.

One less thing requiring porting (unless you really want a GUI version)!

Cheers,
Paul

You already have a GUI version since 'srm' is what is used behind the scenes by Finder's "Secure Empty Trash" (as I pointed out above).

If you wanted to secureley delete files and have a working drive afterwards - would running a large magnet over the drive for an extended period of time destroy it? Would the read heads accross the closest drive platters lose their magnetism? Or is it electromagnetically induced?

I heard that NASA shoots 9-Millimetres into its drive platters once the drive is finished with...

Wiping a drive with an electromagnet will also erase the embedded sectoring, leaving you with an expensive paperweight. Sectoring an IDE drive can only be done at the factory.

As NASA is a public agency, not a secret one, I have a problem with the 9mm story, although that would be effective. NSA might use them for target practice, but other destruction methods are just as effective.

Running a DoD-spec application would be far more reliable than a magnet.

I worked at NASA for 5+ years and never heard of anything being shot (officially, of course :P). As far as I know, standard desktop drives are recycled per government requirements (software sanitize, then either used in other govt systems or sold). Drives containing sensitive data would be erased and then destroyed (I believe the platters are actually ground up).

All the "shoot it, drive a nail through it" stuff might be fun to look at, but it wouldn't do anything to the 98% of the disk surface that isn't physically destroyed. It would make it extremely difficult to read casually, since you couldn't just mount the platters on a new drive and read them, but data recovery centers deal with out-of-shape and physically damaged platters on a regular basis.

Yah, its probably just hearsay... but I saw a photo of a drive with a bullet hole in it with that idea in an Australian PC World Magazine...

Eraser also has the ability to do things such nuke disks - remove everything from a disk so you can safetly give it to someone else or sell it on EBay. Also you can set up scheduled jobs to write over everything on a drive that isn't currently in the filesystem (say, once a week), to clean up temp file images and "possibly?" paging space. The hardest part of that, of course, would be getting it to play nice with all the different filesystems OS X supports.