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#1
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
.....does anyone know of a utility that will DoD (or even simple 0's
overwrite) multiple hard drives in parallell rather than sequentially (thereby saving considerable time)? In a perfect world, the utility would need to work with IDE/SATA/ and SCSI..... Yeah, asking a lot I know. Please post a link if you've seen anything like this. Thanks, Stew |
#2
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
Actually, there is a better way to do this that is fully DOD approved.
For the past several years, almost all IDE hard drives have had an INTERNAL TO THE DRIVE "wipe the entire drive" command. This wipe is EXTREMELY secure, and isn't done by the computer that the drive is connected to, but rather by the drive itself (once the command is issued). A professor (Gordon Hughes) at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) has produced a PC program (command line (DOS), I think) that will do such an erase on a PC, it's called HDDerase and a web search should find it. There have been a couple of articles on C|Net or Infoworld about this feature also. The feature has been around for a surprisingly long time, virtually all IDE and SATA drives have it, but the PC community is surprisingly ignorant of it. [I THINK that HDDerase has an option to issue the command to every drive in the PC at once] S.Lewis wrote: ....does anyone know of a utility that will DoD (or even simple 0's overwrite) multiple hard drives in parallell rather than sequentially (thereby saving considerable time)? In a perfect world, the utility would need to work with IDE/SATA/ and SCSI..... Yeah, asking a lot I know. Please post a link if you've seen anything like this. Thanks, Stew |
#3
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
On Jul 19, 4:44 am, "S.Lewis" wrote:
....does anyone know of a utility that will DoD (or even simple 0's overwrite) multiple hard drives in parallell rather than sequentially (thereby saving considerable time)? In a perfect world, the utility would need to work with IDE/SATA/ and SCSI..... Yeah, asking a lot I know. Please post a link if you've seen anything like this. Thanks, Stew http://dban.sourceforge.net/ Most I've seen wiped with it at once is something like 20. (multiple SCSI drive arrays and multiple controllers) 4 to 6 is fine with a standard PC. Optimal is around 4, 1 master per channel (needs add'l controller) This is used at my employer's place (a computer recycling facility) every day, and it processes something on the order of 20-50 drives per day. Several machines are set up with Promise controllers. Very efficient. Anything you've got, it will wipe. (Unless you've got a relic mfm drive or something) One word or caution, the current version does not wipe the HPA area, but it's only used on small % of drives. |
#4
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
On Jul 19, 7:11 am, Barry Watzman wrote:
Actually, there is a better way to do this that is fully DOD approved. For the past several years, almost all IDE hard drives have had an INTERNAL TO THE DRIVE "wipe the entire drive" command. This wipe is EXTREMELY secure, and isn't done by the computer that the drive is connected to, but rather by the drive itself (once the command is issued). A professor (Gordon Hughes) at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) has produced a PC program (command line (DOS), I think) that will do such an erase on a PC, it's called HDDerase and a web search should find it. There have been a couple of articles on C|Net or Infoworld about this feature also. The feature has been around for a surprisingly long time, virtually all IDE and SATA drives have it, but the PC community is surprisingly ignorant of it. Yes, most IDE/SATA drives above 15GB or so have it built in. But when you have to do bulk wiping, especially on older drives, you never know for sure if it's implemented. And then there is the SCSI issue. |
#5
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
wrote in message oups.com... On Jul 19, 7:11 am, Barry Watzman wrote: Actually, there is a better way to do this that is fully DOD approved. For the past several years, almost all IDE hard drives have had an INTERNAL TO THE DRIVE "wipe the entire drive" command. This wipe is EXTREMELY secure, and isn't done by the computer that the drive is connected to, but rather by the drive itself (once the command is issued). A professor (Gordon Hughes) at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) has produced a PC program (command line (DOS), I think) that will do such an erase on a PC, it's called HDDerase and a web search should find it. There have been a couple of articles on C|Net or Infoworld about this feature also. The feature has been around for a surprisingly long time, virtually all IDE and SATA drives have it, but the PC community is surprisingly ignorant of it. Yes, most IDE/SATA drives above 15GB or so have it built in. But when you have to do bulk wiping, especially on older drives, you never know for sure if it's implemented. And then there is the SCSI issue. The SCSI issue seems to be the deal breaker, though some external devices claim to be able to handle all three. But.....$$$$$$ |
#6
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
On Jul 19, 5:38 pm, "S.Lewis" wrote:
wrote in message oups.com... On Jul 19, 7:11 am, Barry Watzman wrote: Actually, there is a better way to do this that is fully DOD approved. For the past several years, almost all IDE hard drives have had an INTERNAL TO THE DRIVE "wipe the entire drive" command. This wipe is EXTREMELY secure, and isn't done by the computer that the drive is connected to, but rather by the drive itself (once the command is issued). A professor (Gordon Hughes) at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) has produced a PC program (command line (DOS), I think) that will do such an erase on a PC, it's called HDDerase and a web search should find it. There have been a couple of articles on C|Net or Infoworld about this feature also. The feature has been around for a surprisingly long time, virtually all IDE and SATA drives have it, but the PC community is surprisingly ignorant of it. Yes, most IDE/SATA drives above 15GB or so have it built in. But when you have to do bulk wiping, especially on older drives, you never know for sure if it's implemented. And then there is the SCSI issue. The SCSI issue seems to be the deal breaker, though some external devices claim to be able to handle all three. But.....$$$$$$ HDDerase requires a commercial license for non-home use. http://invent.ucsd.edu/technology/ca...SD2005-815.htm DBAN is FREE. It works just fine with internal and external SCSI (yes, and SCA, and fiber channel). USB and 1394 seem to be out. And no zip/ jaz/orb/sparq wiping. For now. |
#7
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
wrote in message oups.com... On Jul 19, 5:38 pm, "S.Lewis" wrote: wrote in message oups.com... On Jul 19, 7:11 am, Barry Watzman wrote: Actually, there is a better way to do this that is fully DOD approved. For the past several years, almost all IDE hard drives have had an INTERNAL TO THE DRIVE "wipe the entire drive" command. This wipe is EXTREMELY secure, and isn't done by the computer that the drive is connected to, but rather by the drive itself (once the command is issued). A professor (Gordon Hughes) at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) has produced a PC program (command line (DOS), I think) that will do such an erase on a PC, it's called HDDerase and a web search should find it. There have been a couple of articles on C|Net or Infoworld about this feature also. The feature has been around for a surprisingly long time, virtually all IDE and SATA drives have it, but the PC community is surprisingly ignorant of it. Yes, most IDE/SATA drives above 15GB or so have it built in. But when you have to do bulk wiping, especially on older drives, you never know for sure if it's implemented. And then there is the SCSI issue. The SCSI issue seems to be the deal breaker, though some external devices claim to be able to handle all three. But.....$$$$$$ HDDerase requires a commercial license for non-home use. http://invent.ucsd.edu/technology/ca...SD2005-815.htm DBAN is FREE. It works just fine with internal and external SCSI (yes, and SCA, and fiber channel). USB and 1394 seem to be out. And no zip/ jaz/orb/sparq wiping. For now. I've got DBAN, but again I don't believe it will wipe drives in parallel, only sequentially. I'll have another look at their readme.... Don't need it for USB or 1394, thankfully. |
#8
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
"Barry Watzman" wrote in message ... Actually, there is a better way to do this that is fully DOD approved. For the past several years, almost all IDE hard drives have had an INTERNAL TO THE DRIVE "wipe the entire drive" command. This wipe is EXTREMELY secure, and isn't done by the computer that the drive is connected to, but rather by the drive itself (once the command is issued). A professor (Gordon Hughes) at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) has produced a PC program (command line (DOS), I think) that will do such an erase on a PC, it's called HDDerase and a web search should find it. There have been a couple of articles on C|Net or Infoworld about this feature also. The feature has been around for a surprisingly long time, virtually all IDE and SATA drives have it, but the PC community is surprisingly ignorant of it. [I THINK that HDDerase has an option to issue the command to every drive in the PC at once] Thanks Barry. I was able to reference information from the HDDerase page (it doesn't do SCSI) to another page (and device) that does address all three (IDE/SATA/SCSI). |
#9
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
On Jul 19, 7:35 pm, "S.Lewis" wrote:
wrote in message oups.com... On Jul 19, 5:38 pm, "S.Lewis" wrote: wrote in message groups.com... On Jul 19, 7:11 am, Barry Watzman wrote: Actually, there is a better way to do this that is fully DOD approved. For the past several years, almost all IDE hard drives have had an INTERNAL TO THE DRIVE "wipe the entire drive" command. This wipe is EXTREMELY secure, and isn't done by the computer that the drive is connected to, but rather by the drive itself (once the command is issued). A professor (Gordon Hughes) at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) has produced a PC program (command line (DOS), I think) that will do such an erase on a PC, it's called HDDerase and a web search should find it. There have been a couple of articles on C|Net or Infoworld about this feature also. The feature has been around for a surprisingly long time, virtually all IDE and SATA drives have it, but the PC community is surprisingly ignorant of it. Yes, most IDE/SATA drives above 15GB or so have it built in. But when you have to do bulk wiping, especially on older drives, you never know for sure if it's implemented. And then there is the SCSI issue. The SCSI issue seems to be the deal breaker, though some external devices claim to be able to handle all three. But.....$$$$$$ HDDerase requires a commercial license for non-home use. http://invent.ucsd.edu/technology/ca...SD2005-815.htm DBAN is FREE. It works just fine with internal and external SCSI (yes, and SCA, and fiber channel). USB and 1394 seem to be out. And no zip/ jaz/orb/sparq wiping. For now. I've got DBAN, but again I don't believe it will wipe drives in parallel, only sequentially. I'll have another look at their readme.... It WILL wipe in parallel. I've done it. Lots of time. Just type 'autonuke' and watch. |
#10
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(OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...
NO program run on the computer can necessarily write to drives in
parallel, because the disk controller cannot necessarily write to drives in parallel (for example, a master and slave drive on the same IDE channel cannot be written to in parallel; at any given time you can only access one drive or the other, they are both on the same controller and even the same cable). That's where using a command internal to the drive has an advantage; you tell the drive to wipe itself, and while the operation may then take a long time, everything happens within the drive. No further interaction with the controller (the IDE or SATA or even SCSI controller) is required. That doesn't mean that any given program using the "wipe drive" command will necessarily support doing multiple drives in parallel, but it's at least conceptually possible. However, doing it through the controller may be literally impossible, unless each drive is on a totally separate controller and is using bus mastering DMA. S.Lewis wrote: I've got DBAN, but again I don't believe it will wipe drives in parallel, only sequentially. I'll have another look at their readme.... Don't need it for USB or 1394, thankfully. |
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