I don't use drive warranties, unless it is DOA or fails preliminary testing such as preclearing.

 

Once I have personal data on a drive, if it fails, I destroy it.  Here's why:

 

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/02/09/1525212/ask-slashdot-how-to-deal-with-refurbed-drives-with-customer-data

 

The only example, is if the disk was fully encrypted.  Full-disk encryption, if implemented in unRAID, would alleviate this risk.

I use dban with dod specs or badblocks in destructive write mode if I am returning or reselling a drive.

if I had a hard drive that was functional but failing, I usually remove the partition and try to erase what I can.

I learned there is an ATA command that tells the hard drive firmware to do the erase.

It's much faster then doing the erase via DD,DBAN or BADBLOCKS.

 

So if I were to return a drive today I would do the ATA secure erase command first.

Then attempt a dban or badblocks just to be sure.

If the drive has failed, you can't reliably erase it.

 

If the drive is faiING, it may take days, or weeks, to erase it, and then are you really sure?

 

The ATA secure erase is the only one that is really acceptable, and if the drive is already in a state that I don't trust it, I ain't trusting it to erase securely.

I hear ya, and I agree.

For me. I've never RMA'ed a drive that had anything I needed to worry about.

It was usually data drives with mp3's and movies that I own.

Full-disk encryption, if implemented in unRAID, would alleviate this risk.

 

True, but it would also make data recovery in a sh*t-hits-the-fan type of scenario nearly impossible.  I prefer to be able to recover my data with ease.  If I were storing a lot of personal data on a particular drive, then I would consider not RMAing it as you suggest.  However, most of my data is just movies, music, and photos that aren't terribly important.

Not at all.  I've recovered deleted files, such as using reiserfsck, despite the fact I was using full-disk encryption.  You just have to identify the right device.

You guys can seriously recover data after a preclear or even better dban runs?

 

I find that hard to believe.

 

Sent from my SGH-I727R using Tapatalk

 

Depends on what the drive was primary used for.  I have RMA'd a parity drive, and I wouldn't hesitate to RMA a media drive from unraid or a data drive from my mythtv server.  A backup drive or OS drive is a completely different story unless I could wipe it first.

You guys can seriously recover data after a preclear or even better dban runs?

 

I find that hard to believe.

 

Sent from my SGH-I727R using Tapatalk

 

only a partial preclear. I.E. preclear started and killed within moments of starting to erase the drive.

We've seen it happen on the forum.

 

if DBAN, full preclear or badblocks in write destructive mode is run to completion, nothing can be recovered.