On 08/19/2010 11:25 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 08/19/2010 02:04 PM, mike cloaked wrote: >> On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 6:51 PM, Tim<ignored_mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 17:17 +0100, mike cloaked wrote: >>>> if I plug the old (not-very-healthy!) disk in to a sata-to-usb >>>> external adapter, and then hotplug the usb cable into the new machine >>>> on a usb port, I am guessing that I will not be able to pass hdparm >>>> commands to the old disk connected in this way >>> It depends on the chips in the adapters (see hdparm docs). Mine don't >>> support it, and the only one of them that I can warn you about is the >>> Seagate desktop expansion drive, the others have no branding. >> OK thanks - if anyone knows of a specific adapter that *will* work I >> would like to know - of course having the drive in its internal bay is >> likely not to work either since many (most?) bioses will freeze the >> drive from the ata command viewpoint such that it can't be unlocked to >> pass the secure erase command anyway! So having an external adapter is >> probably the only way I can easily do it but I do need to know that >> there is an external adapter that will work. What I was unsure of is >> whether there is any that would work since I had been told that usb >> can't do it at all! >> >> (I did look at the hdparm man command but did not see the answer to >> the latter question) >> >> Mike >> > Well, you could always just perform a mostly secure wipe by just doing > dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdc > several times, so that the bits are overwritten by random data. > UCSD had released a paper a few years ago claiming that the drive's own firmware can do the full erase. The utility's name was HDDEraseWeb.zip I do not know if it does or not - they did not release the source code, which makes it completely untrustworthy. For a university to release only the executable and not the source code raises red flags. You can always resort to these linux tools: scrub(1), shred(1), wipe(1) The key is to run the process with a high number of iterations. If the drive or partitions cannot be erased while booted, then you can resort to booting from live CD and then run dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX (whatever you target disk X stands for). will wipe the whole drive. Of course you can choose a partition thereof. The key is you iterate the above about 10 times. Start when the disk is cold and has been lying un-powered. There is a very good reason for this. I leave it to you to figure that out why :) -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
