Linux Software For Using Secure Erase?

[iamdarkyoshi]

I've got loads of hard drives to nuke. I've tired dban, too slow and unreliable. Tried killdisk, and its an absolute mess.

 

Tried ubuntu's disk manager, and secure erase (tells supported drives to erase without throwing data over the sata bus) works nicely, 1TB drives take a couple hours instead of a weekend.

 

ON SOME DRIVES.

 

I've got two identical WD7500BPVX drives, one will secure erase fine, the other one says "Error formatting disk"

 

But I've checked the smart data on both drives, they are both fine, and on my windows PC, I can create partitions and read/write files to them.

 

Anyone know either a solution to ubuntu's onboard disk utility issues or an alternate software?

 

@manikyath  @Captain_WD

[manikyath]

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd*

 

where sd* refers to the drive you're wiping (sdb, sdc, etc.) 

 

or as an alternative instead of writing zeros you can write random garbage:

sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sd*

[iamdarkyoshi]

55 minutes ago, manikyath said:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd*

 

where sd* refers to the drive you're wiping (sdb, sdc, etc.) 

 

or as an alternative instead of writing zeros you can write random garbage:

sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sd*

I'd like to use secure erase, as it doesn't really throw data through the sata bus (machine has two raid controllers and two sata cards) for a total of 25 drives...

[manikyath]

34 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I'd like to use secure erase, as it doesn't really throw data through the sata bus (machine has two raid controllers and two sata cards) for a total of 25 drives...

dd quite literally takes the drive, abd writes blocks of data to the bare metal.

[corrado33]

2 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I've got loads of hard drives to nuke. I've tired dban, too slow and unreliable. Tried killdisk, and its an absolute mess.

 

Tried ubuntu's disk manager, and secure erase (tells supported drives to erase without throwing data over the sata bus) works nicely, 1TB drives take a couple hours instead of a weekend.

 

ON SOME DRIVES.

 

I've got two identical WD7500BPVX drives, one will secure erase fine, the other one says "Error formatting disk"

 

But I've checked the smart data on both drives, they are both fine, and on my windows PC, I can create partitions and read/write files to them.

 

Anyone know either a solution to ubuntu's onboard disk utility issues or an alternate software?

 

@manikyath  @Captain_WD

Shred or scrub, depending on distribution. Those are the typical linux secure erase command line utilities. Very easy to use. 

 

Just head over to your command line and type "man scrub" and "man shred". If you have either of them installed, it'll bring up the manual for that utility.

 

You DO realize that securely erasing a disk literally writes to the entire disk multiple times, hence it takes quite a while, right? 

[iamdarkyoshi]

26 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Shred or scrub, depending on distribution. Those are the typical linux secure erase command line utilities. Very easy to use. 

 

Just head over to your command line and type "man scrub" and "man shred". If you have either of them installed, it'll bring up the manual for that utility.

 

You DO realize that securely erasing a disk literally writes to the entire disk multiple times, hence it takes quite a while, right? 

I've been using dban, which manually sends multiple passes over sata, instesd of secure erase where it tells the hdd's own controller to do it itself

[corrado33]

17 minutes ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I've been using dban, which manually sends multiple passes over sata, instesd of secure erase where it tells the hdd's own controller to do it itself

Both shred and scrub are much quicker than dban according to the internet. Both overwrite the files using either sequential or random data (or whatever data you want). Both can specify multiple passes, both can erase the entire disk/partition. 

 

However, if you literally just want to destroy these disks, then just take a sledgehammer to them. 

[iamdarkyoshi]

1 hour ago, corrado33 said:

Both shred and scrub are much quicker than dban according to the internet. Both overwrite the files using either sequential or random data (or whatever data you want). Both can specify multiple passes, both can erase the entire disk/partition. 

 

However, if you literally just want to destroy these disks, then just take a sledgehammer to them. 

The point is to sell them...

[corrado33]

1 minute ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

The point is to sell them...

Then shred or scrub would work fine. It's what I used. Seriously, if these are personal disks, then you're not important enough for someone to go through the trouble of finding your porn. (Not to mention data recovery after being overwritten by one of these utilities is extremely expensive, if not impossible.)

 

If they are disks from a company, then just do whatever the minimum spec. is so that you are covered under the law and be done with it. 

[Saurfang]

2 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I've been using dban, which manually sends multiple passes over sata, instesd of secure erase where it tells the hdd's own controller to do it itself

Fun fact, it's a myth that you need multiple passes to securely erase something. 1 pass over is enough to make everything on the disk unrecoverable, doesn't matter if you are a tech-savvy rando or the FBI (assuming you don't have bad sectors or something).

[iamdarkyoshi]

1 hour ago, Saurfang said:

(assuming you don't have bad sectors or something).

Funny you mention that...