April 7, 201115 yr I have a drive I'm about to RMA (A couple of power pins have been pushed back and don't make great contact). Not sure if they will even give me an RMA on this, but figured it was worth a shot. Question: I'd like to wipe my data off before sending it to them. The drive still works, I'm just not comfortable with it in the array and figured I may as well take it out now when I can do it at my leisure, rather than being forced because it died completely down the road... Would running a preclear on the drive be a good solution? Thanks!
April 7, 201115 yr Yes. The more repeats the better. When I was at UCSD, a student at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research told me that they could read the last ten writes to a HD. This was years ago so I'm betting they can read more now. But I doubt anyone with that type of equipment cares whats on your drive.
April 7, 201115 yr Author But I doubt anyone with that type of equipment cares whats on your drive. For me, it's like shredding documents that have personal info on them. Pretty unlikely someone will be going through my garbage/recycling to steal my identity, but never hurts to be careful...
April 7, 201115 yr While a preclear will keep most prying eyes away, I still prefer something that writes random garbage to the drive rather than just writing zeros again and again. DBAN has multiple methods of shredding a drive including a full 35 pass Gutmann wipe. I've never gone to the trouble of a full Gutmann (even Gutmann himself does not recommend that method anymore) but I have done a few drives with a multipass PRNG wipes.
April 7, 201115 yr Has any tried a drives built in "secure erase"? Here is info on secure erase with link to freeware: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/how-to-really-erase-a-hard-drive/129
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.