Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2024 09:04:32 -0400 From: mike tancsa <mike@sentex.net> To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How to zero a failing disk drive before disposal? Message-ID: <4043e4c9-3365-4b91-ba7e-2004beeaa7ac@sentex.net> In-Reply-To: <CAHu1Y70T0VNtq%2BMvQ1AoXqPSF4qhD_YYPqWiBFnm0vR8%2BDkULA@mail.gmail.com> References: <5117.1728561469@segfault.tristatelogic.com> <CAHu1Y70T0VNtq%2BMvQ1AoXqPSF4qhD_YYPqWiBFnm0vR8%2BDkULA@mail.gmail.com>
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On 10/10/2024 8:46 AM, Michael Sierchio wrote:
>
> On Thu, Oct 10, 2024 at 7:58 AM Ronald F. Guilmette
> <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote:
>
> I have a pretty ancient 4TB spinning rust drive (WD4001FAEX) that
> is unambiguously at
> death's door:
>
> Any suggestions? If worse comes to worse I guess I will end up
> writing my own tiny
> little C program to just write 4KB blocks to a designated output
> file while ignoring
> all output errors, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if
> somebody else already
> created something I can use in this context.
>
>
> There is no method of writing to a disk that can reliably delete or
> obscure all data – modern disk drives silently remap sectors, making
> them unavailable to the host for writes. If the data on the drive is
> particularly sensitive, physical destruction of the media is the best
> approach. The DOD method is crush, then burn. ;-)
We do both for disks. We do a dd if=/dev/urandom first. Regardless if
that fails/passes, we then physically destroy the disk. The idea being
if for some reason step 2 is missed, low effort prying eyes will not
find anything. Depends on your situation and sensitivity of the data.
---Mike
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/10/2024 8:46 AM, Michael Sierchio
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAHu1Y70T0VNtq+MvQ1AoXqPSF4qhD_YYPqWiBFnm0vR8+DkULA@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Oct 10, 2024 at
7:58 AM Ronald F. Guilmette <<a
href="mailto:rfg@tristatelogic.com" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">rfg@tristatelogic.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I
have a pretty ancient 4TB spinning rust drive (WD4001FAEX)
that is unambiguously at<br>
death's door:<br>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
Any suggestions? If worse comes to worse I guess I will end
up writing my own tiny<br>
little C program to just write 4KB blocks to a designated
output file while ignoring<br>
all output errors, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if
somebody else already<br>
created something I can use in this context.</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>There is no method of writing to a disk that can reliably
delete or obscure all data – modern disk drives silently
remap sectors, making them unavailable to the host for
writes. If the data on the drive is particularly sensitive,
physical destruction of the media is the best approach. The
DOD method is crush, then burn. ;-)<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>We do both for disks. We do a dd if=/dev/urandom first.
Regardless if that fails/passes, we then physically destroy the
disk. The idea being if for some reason step 2 is missed, low
effort prying eyes will not find anything. Depends on your
situation and sensitivity of the data.<br>
</p>
<p> ---Mike<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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