Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2024 08:46:32 -0400 From: Michael Sierchio <kudzu@tenebras.com> To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How to zero a failing disk drive before disposal? Message-ID: <CAHu1Y70T0VNtq%2BMvQ1AoXqPSF4qhD_YYPqWiBFnm0vR8%2BDkULA@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <5117.1728561469@segfault.tristatelogic.com> References: <5117.1728561469@segfault.tristatelogic.com>
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[-- Attachment #1 --] 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. ;-) – M [-- Attachment #2 --] <div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"></div><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">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><br>– M </div></div></div>
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