Any way to wipe this drive?

kony writes:


Just send the drive in as-is. They could not allow anyone
to steal data off of drives as it would ruin their business,

I got a replacement laptop drive from Samsung. It had a complete NTFS
filesystem from someone in Brazil. [He liked Christina Aguilera...]

It failed within days; it would work only when cold. I got a third one
and it was empty...

--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

On 14 Jun 2008 04:09:44 GMT, Arno Wagner
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage kony wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:59:35 -0700 (PDT),
"
wrote:

I have a 120 GB hard drive that my RAID controller encountered an
error with, so I am trying to wipe it and return it to the
manufacturer. But when I use Copywipe to wipe it, Copywipe encounters
an error at 52%. It asks me if I want to continue, and I enter Y, but
then Copywipe freezes the system. So it looks like Copywipe will only
be able to wipe half the drive. Any way I can get past that error and
wipe the rest of it? Any other wiping software that can handle a bad
drive?

Just send the drive in as-is. They could not allow anyone
to steal data off of drives as it would ruin their business,

I do not believe that. I have by now read of quite a few cases
where people got convicted because of things found on their
HDDs when they handed in their computer for repairs.

1) You have heard of snooping techs at some repair shop,
not one of the hard drive manufacturers pulling data off to
scrutinize what it was.

2) As I wrote above, but that you snipped out, if something
illegal was on the drive such that the OP would get
themselves in trouble, they can just destroy the drive
instead. Discount the return shipping cost and then how
much is a used (may get refurb drive in return as well)
120GB drive worth? Not very much, it would be easier to
state it's value in replacement cost of a new drive or about
$40 if that, except it's non-appliable as the new drive has
it's full lifetime of use ahead of it.

I would
not be surprised if some HDD manufacturers actually where
running a specific content scanner on disks sent in for
repairs and perceive that as a public service.

You might not be surprised if there is a prowler outside 104
E. Main Street, Nowhere USA either, but that doesn't mean
there actually is one!

Show one example of it happening from a HDD manufacturer.
It goes against customer trust and would destroy their
business in a heartbeat.


There also
have been several reports of repair shops harvesting contents
from customer's computers.

Which is quite a bit different. Working drive, low-skilled
tech, legitimate reason to dig into files on the system,
feeling insulated from any repercussions.

Regardless, like I already wrote but you snipped out, just
destroy the drive if there's something really bad on it (and
make lifestyle changes?).

On 14 Jun 2008 09:05:02 GMT, Arno Wagner
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage DevilsPGD wrote:
In message Arno Wagner
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage kony wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:59:35 -0700 (PDT),
"
wrote:

I have a 120 GB hard drive that my RAID controller encountered an
error with, so I am trying to wipe it and return it to the
manufacturer. But when I use Copywipe to wipe it, Copywipe encounters
an error at 52%. It asks me if I want to continue, and I enter Y, but
then Copywipe freezes the system. So it looks like Copywipe will only
be able to wipe half the drive. Any way I can get past that error and
wipe the rest of it? Any other wiping software that can handle a bad
drive?

Just send the drive in as-is. They could not allow anyone
to steal data off of drives as it would ruin their business,

I do not believe that. I have by now read of quite a few cases
where people got convicted because of things found on their
HDDs when they handed in their computer for repairs. I would
not be surprised if some HDD manufacturers actually where
running a specific content scanner on disks sent in for
repairs and perceive that as a public service. There also
have been several reports of repair shops harvesting contents
from customer's computers.

You snipped the "unless you have something illegal" and then argued as
though kony was giving bad advice due to the potential for getting
caught doing something illegal.

I actually think that the illegality is not relevant.

Of course it is relevant.


There is a
good possibility that the contents of your drive will be looked at.

Based upon what? That you have no evidence to the contrary?
But do you have even one example of it ever happening?
There is a clear expectation that if it ever did, it would
make waves around the internet for many years, you'd get
tired of reading about it over and over.

There is an even better possiblity you are just being
paranoid. What about those people who aren't doing anything
illegal and take their PC to a regular repair shop? They
too know it is *possible* some files on their system could
be looked at. What about when you leave your house? It is
*possible* someone could take a picture of you. What about
when you post to usenet? It is *possible* someone could
archive it. There is a reasonable limit to how much effort
one goes to, to protect their privacy, when there are no
examples of the situation under which you are concerned
having ever been a problem.


There's probably even some pervs out there that deliberately
take nude pictures of themselves and put them on their PC
just for the tech to find. Come to think of it, would be
funny as heck if someone made TubGirl their wallpaper before
taking the system in. Gross, but still funny to see the
look on the repair shop's technician's face.

Lastly, consider just how many drives pass through a hard
drive manufacturer's doors for RMA. Do you really think
they don't monitor handling of these drives? It's probably
a pretty high security area given their desire to prevent
the things you speculate might happen, not to mention that
anyone there intent on doing so would have thousands upon
thousands of drives to pick from, even if there were no
security at all do they really go to the effort of repairing
a damaged hard drive so they can snoop the files, or do they
grab one of the piles and piles of drives that still work if
they're just in a nosey mood?

The whole thing is unrealistic at least. The risk of
sending a damaged hard drive in for RMA replacement is even
close to the same risk as taking a PC to a repair shop,
handing your system over to the geek tech down the street,
or even throwing the drive away without wiping it first.

If you want to go to extra measures out of paranoia where
there is no indication it is warranted, then by all means go
right ahead... we have no idea what is on your hard drive.

On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 19:07:47 +0000 (UTC), David Lesher
wrote:

kony writes:


Just send the drive in as-is. They could not allow anyone
to steal data off of drives as it would ruin their business,

I got a replacement laptop drive from Samsung. It had a complete NTFS
filesystem from someone in Brazil. [He liked Christina Aguilera...]

So it isn't a situation like we're talking about here where
the filesystem is already wiped to the point where only a
wiping utility has anything to do (and fail at completing).

Regardless, you do bring up a good point I had not
considered, that if they made a huge blunder and somehow
managed to divert some returned drive to replacement status
without having checked it thoroughly and wiped it, then if
the drive had intact filesystem instead of wiped as far as
OP has, it would expose the original owner's files.

Did you notify Samsung of this? I hope so, that they might
put more attention into preventing it.

kony wrote
Arno Wagner wrote
DevilsPGD wrote
Arno Wagner wrote
kony wrote
wrote

I have a 120 GB hard drive that my RAID controller encountered
an error with, so I am trying to wipe it and return it to the
manufacturer. But when I use Copywipe to wipe it, Copywipe
encounters an error at 52%. It asks me if I want to continue,
and I enter Y, but then Copywipe freezes the system. So it
looks like Copywipe will only be able to wipe half the drive.
Any way I can get past that error and wipe the rest of it?
Any other wiping software that can handle a bad drive?

Just send the drive in as-is. They could not allow anyone
to steal data off of drives as it would ruin their business,

I do not believe that. I have by now read of quite a few cases
where people got convicted because of things found on their
HDDs when they handed in their computer for repairs. I would
not be surprised if some HDD manufacturers actually where
running a specific content scanner on disks sent in for
repairs and perceive that as a public service. There also
have been several reports of repair shops harvesting contents
from customer's computers.

You snipped the "unless you have something illegal" and
then argued as though kony was giving bad advice due to
the potential for getting caught doing something illegal.

I actually think that the illegality is not relevant.

Of course it is relevant.

There is a good possibility that the contents of your drive will be looked at.

Based upon what?

Based on those caught when it has happened.

That you have no evidence to the contrary? But do
you have even one example of it ever happening?

Yep.

There is a clear expectation that if it ever did, it would
make waves around the internet for many years, you'd
get tired of reading about it over and over.

Pity it didnt when that happened.

There is an even better possiblity you are just being paranoid.

Nope, not when at least one has got caught when it happened.

What about those people who aren't doing anything
illegal and take their PC to a regular repair shop?
They too know it is *possible* some files on their
system could be looked at. What about when you
leave your house? It is *possible* someone could
take a picture of you. What about when you post
to usenet? It is *possible* someone could archive it.

Irrelevant if it isnt illegal.

There is a reasonable limit to how much effort one goes to, to
protect their privacy, when there are no examples of the situation
under which you are concerned having ever been a problem.

Only if you're as pig ignorant as you are.

There's probably even some pervs out there that deliberately
take nude pictures of themselves and put them on their PC
just for the tech to find. Come to think of it, would be
funny as heck if someone made TubGirl their wallpaper
before taking the system in. Gross, but still funny to
see the look on the repair shop's technician's face.

Lastly, consider just how many drives pass through
a hard drive manufacturer's doors for RMA. Do you
really think they don't monitor handling of these drives?
It's probably a pretty high security area given their
desire to prevent the things you speculate might happen,

Have fun explaining the Samsung drive someone else mentioned.

not to mention that anyone there intent on doing so would have
thousands upon thousands of drives to pick from, even if there
were no security at all do they really go to the effort of repairing
a damaged hard drive so they can snoop the files,

You aint established that they need to repair the drive, or that they wont
repair the drives that are repairable, and discover the illegal content.

or do they grab one of the piles and piles of drives
that still work if they're just in a nosey mood?

Or the repair a repairable drive or one with an
intermittent fault and discover the illegal content.

The whole thing is unrealistic at least.

Have fun explaining those who have got caught.

The risk of sending a damaged hard drive in for RMA replacement
is even close to the same risk as taking a PC to a repair shop,
handing your system over to the geek tech down the street,
or even throwing the drive away without wiping it first.

Some have got caught that way too.

If you want to go to extra measures out of paranoia where
there is no indication it is warranted, then by all means go
right ahead... we have no idea what is on your hard drive.

Yep, and for all you know it could be flagrantly illegal.

wrote in message
...
On Jun 13, 7:08 pm, "Calab" wrote:

All depends on the OP definition of "freezes".

I've seen HDD errors cause a system to become unresponsive while the system
tries to access a bad sector, and it can last for several minutes.

That's because Windows does several retries, and the drive does too.

I waited over an hour and the progress meter didn't move, hitting ESC
didn't do anything, and the computer started beeping as if the
keyboard buffer was full.

This indicates the drive's firmware has crashed and hung the IDE channel.
Windows does not handle hung IDE devices well, does any OS?

I once destroyed a 15 year old SCSI drive with a speaker magnet.
It hung Windows 2000, and I had to power cycle it get it back.

In article ommunications, "Eric Gisin" wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Jun 13, 7:08 pm, "Calab" wrote:

All depends on the OP definition of "freezes".

I've seen HDD errors cause a system to become unresponsive while the system
tries to access a bad sector, and it can last for several minutes.

That's because Windows does several retries, and the drive does too.

I waited over an hour and the progress meter didn't move, hitting ESC
didn't do anything, and the computer started beeping as if the
keyboard buffer was full.

This indicates the drive's firmware has crashed and hung the IDE channel.
Windows does not handle hung IDE devices well, does any OS?

I once destroyed a 15 year old SCSI drive with a speaker magnet.
It hung Windows 2000, and I had to power cycle it get it back.

Alot of those old SCSI drives had some of its firmware stored on an
unaccessible part of the disk itself, and if that part was damaged or erased,
the drive would not function.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage kony wrote:
On 14 Jun 2008 09:05:02 GMT, Arno Wagner
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage DevilsPGD wrote:
In message Arno Wagner
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage kony wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:59:35 -0700 (PDT),
"
wrote:

I have a 120 GB hard drive that my RAID controller encountered an
error with, so I am trying to wipe it and return it to the
manufacturer. But when I use Copywipe to wipe it, Copywipe encounters
an error at 52%. It asks me if I want to continue, and I enter Y, but
then Copywipe freezes the system. So it looks like Copywipe will only
be able to wipe half the drive. Any way I can get past that error and
wipe the rest of it? Any other wiping software that can handle a bad
drive?

Just send the drive in as-is. They could not allow anyone
to steal data off of drives as it would ruin their business,

I do not believe that. I have by now read of quite a few cases
where people got convicted because of things found on their
HDDs when they handed in their computer for repairs. I would
not be surprised if some HDD manufacturers actually where
running a specific content scanner on disks sent in for
repairs and perceive that as a public service. There also
have been several reports of repair shops harvesting contents
from customer's computers.

You snipped the "unless you have something illegal" and then argued as
though kony was giving bad advice due to the potential for getting
caught doing something illegal.

I actually think that the illegality is not relevant.

Of course it is relevant.


There is a
good possibility that the contents of your drive will be looked at.

Based upon what? That you have no evidence to the contrary?

Ine thing is personal communications (sorry). The story
about "Geek squad" even having servers in some locations
where emplyees would store things found on customer's
computers stands out. There are others I am too lazy to
look up.

But do you have even one example of it ever happening?

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/06/1916207

There is a clear expectation that if it ever did, it would
make waves around the internet for many years, you'd get
tired of reading about it over and over.

I think the waves have been far smaller than that. For example
they doid not even reach you. I am also surprised that there
was not significantly more oytrage and mainstream discuussion
about this.


There is an even better possiblity you are just being
paranoid.

Sorry, but no. Not in this case.

What about those people who aren't doing anything
illegal and take their PC to a regular repair shop? They
too know it is *possible* some files on their system could
be looked at.

It seems that it is likely. ''Possible'' does not concern me.


What about when you leave your house? It is
*possible* someone could take a picture of you. What about
when you post to usenet? It is *possible* someone could
archive it. There is a reasonable limit to how much effort
one goes to, to protect their privacy, when there are no
examples of the situation under which you are concerned
having ever been a problem.

There's probably even some pervs out there that deliberately
take nude pictures of themselves and put them on their PC
just for the tech to find. Come to think of it, would be
funny as heck if someone made TubGirl their wallpaper before
taking the system in. Gross, but still funny to see the
look on the repair shop's technician's face.

Lastly, consider just how many drives pass through a hard
drive manufacturer's doors for RMA. Do you really think
they don't monitor handling of these drives? It's probably
a pretty high security area given their desire to prevent
the things you speculate might happen, not to mention that
anyone there intent on doing so would have thousands upon
thousands of drives to pick from, even if there were no
security at all do they really go to the effort of repairing
a damaged hard drive so they can snoop the files, or do they
grab one of the piles and piles of drives that still work if
they're just in a nosey mood?

Well, I actually do think the risks from HDD are relatively
low, unless there is organized scanning to aid law enforcement.
So I would say: No illegal stuff -- Warranty return to the
manufacturer is safe. But that is a personal opinion.

The whole thing is unrealistic at least. The risk of
sending a damaged hard drive in for RMA replacement is even
close to the same risk as taking a PC to a repair shop,
handing your system over to the geek tech down the street,
or even throwing the drive away without wiping it first.

Ah, maybe you say something else here than you indetded to?
The risk of the repair shop has been demonstrated and may be
pretty high. The HDD manufacturer risk should be low, I think.

If you want to go to extra measures out of paranoia where
there is no indication it is warranted, then by all means go
right ahead... we have no idea what is on your hard drive.

Read the story I linked. Should open your eyes.

Arno

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage kony wrote:
On 14 Jun 2008 04:09:44 GMT, Arno Wagner
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage kony wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:59:35 -0700 (PDT),
"
wrote:

I have a 120 GB hard drive that my RAID controller encountered an
error with, so I am trying to wipe it and return it to the
manufacturer. But when I use Copywipe to wipe it, Copywipe encounters
an error at 52%. It asks me if I want to continue, and I enter Y, but
then Copywipe freezes the system. So it looks like Copywipe will only
be able to wipe half the drive. Any way I can get past that error and
wipe the rest of it? Any other wiping software that can handle a bad
drive?

Just send the drive in as-is. They could not allow anyone
to steal data off of drives as it would ruin their business,

I do not believe that. I have by now read of quite a few cases
where people got convicted because of things found on their
HDDs when they handed in their computer for repairs.

1) You have heard of snooping techs at some repair shop,
not one of the hard drive manufacturers pulling data off to
scrutinize what it was.

2) As I wrote above, but that you snipped out, if something

What is you beef with me shortening postings? Don't you have a
newsreader that shows the full history? I do this purely to
make things easier to read. The old, full posting is there.
I hide nothing by quoting selectively the parts that I want
to comment on.

Incidentially, netiquete recommends shortening postings in
relpies to the parts you reply to.

Arno

kony writes:


Regardless, you do bring up a good point I had not
considered, that if they made a huge blunder and somehow
managed to divert some returned drive to replacement status
without having checked it thoroughly and wiped it, then if
the drive had intact filesystem instead of wiped as far as
OP has, it would expose the original owner's files.

To me it appeared they had tested the drive, decided it was
OK [the fault appeared when the drive had been run for 8 hours or so..] and
sent it out. They clearly had no SOP of wiping such at
the factory level. [i.e. rewriting all the bits, not just
those the OS can see...]

Did you notify Samsung of this? I hope so, that they might
put more attention into preventing it.

As if I could find someone who would know and care?
--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433