Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2024 04:57:49 -0700 From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: How to zero a failing disk drive before disposal? Message-ID: <5117.1728561469@segfault.tristatelogic.com>
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I have a pretty ancient 4TB spinning rust drive (WD4001FAEX) that is unamb=
iguously at
death's door:
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 173 051 Pre-fail Always =
- 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 167 161 021 Pre-fail Always =
- 10641
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always =
- 155
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always =
- 1
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always =
- 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always =
- 829
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always =
- 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always =
- 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always =
- 80
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always =
- 24
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always =
- 130
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 126 098 000 Old_age Always =
- 26
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 199 199 000 Old_age Always =
- 1
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always =
- 36
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline =
- 32
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always =
- 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline =
- 40
In addition to the above clear indications of failure, "smartctl -t long" =
dies almost
immediately with a fatal error.
Now I plan to dispose of the drive (appropriately, at a proper e-waste rec=
ycling place)
however there may be some confidential data on the thing that should be wi=
ped first...
because I'm paranoid.
I used to own an old RadioShack bulk tape eraser (basically just a big ele=
ctromagnet)
that I would use on drives before disposing of them but I don't have that =
any more.
I could try using smartctl to initiate a secure erase, but for various rea=
sons it would
just be more convenient if I could just dd /dev/zero to the thing. But th=
ere's a catch.
According to what I have read, dd will halt if it encounters a write error=
. That's a
clear problem in this context. Also, according to the dd man page, the co=
nv=3Dnoerror
option for dd won't really be helpful in this case since that just prevent=
s dd from
stopping on _input_ errors.
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 whil=
e 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.
Suggestions welcome.
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