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#1
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Fast way to wipe an external HDD?
I have recently acquired 2 new WD My Passport 4 TB external hard
drives. I really like their small size, different colors, and the fact that they get their power from the USB 3.0 cable plugged into the USB port on my desktop - no separate power cord and little brick to crawl around plugging into an electrical outlet. I have three old external hard drives that I would like to retire. The largest is 3 TB and the smallest is 1 TB. One is an old and slow USB 2.0. I've tried using several different free wipe programs, but all seem to require over 15 hours to do a one-cycle wipe on the smallest drive. I'd like quicker. Question: Is here a good free wipe program that would wipe these external drives in less than a workday? Once wiped, I will throw these old drives away unless someone speaks up and will pay for the shipping charges to get them from me to them. Thanks in advance for your help. |
#2
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Fast way to wipe an external HDD?
Kirk Bubul wrote:
I have recently acquired 2 new WD My Passport 4 TB external hard drives. I really like their small size, different colors, and the fact that they get their power from the USB 3.0 cable plugged into the USB port on my desktop - no separate power cord and little brick to crawl around plugging into an electrical outlet. I have three old external hard drives that I would like to retire. The largest is 3 TB and the smallest is 1 TB. One is an old and slow USB 2.0. I've tried using several different free wipe programs, but all seem to require over 15 hours to do a one-cycle wipe on the smallest drive. I'd like quicker. Question: Is here a good free wipe program that would wipe these external drives in less than a workday? Once wiped, I will throw these old drives away unless someone speaks up and will pay for the shipping charges to get them from me to them. Thanks in advance for your help. You could get a precision torx screwdriver set (or a bit set to use in a hex bit screwdriver shaft) to open the HDD case and remove the platters. I think a set cost me about $8 that had the #4, #5, #5.5, #6, #7, #8, and #9 tip sizes. https://www.amazon.com/Tamper-Proof-.../dp/B0002SPICU https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-8-...381H/302735271 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Channell...P-5A/206262083 and here's a monster precision bit kit for just $9: https://www.walmart.com/ip/45in1-Tor...Tool/158339402 (a search on "precision torx set" at walmart.com finds lots of choices) Basically I needed a set of much smaller torx bits than came in a couple of mega-piece screwdriver kits. While there are security torx bolts that require a hole in the middle of the bit, look at your HDD and it probably has just simple (no-security) torx bolt heads. I got a set of precision torx screwdrivers because I couldn't tell just by looking which size was needed. After salvaging parts out of the HDD, toss the case and ancilliary hardware and keep the platters as non-insulating mirror-shiny coasters, something like mounted deer/moose heads on the wall. The magnets inside are damn strong but but they can be so well-glued or pressed into an assembly that you can't get them out. If you want to later discard the platters, just run a magnet over them in random patterns while rotating the platters. Not many users have deguassing coils (CRTs faded away a long time ago). If you don't trust a magnet, put a grinding wheel or wire-brush wheel ($3-$5) in a electric hand drill and destroy up the coating. Since you would run a software wipe when you're not around, like when sleeping, why not erase and then donate to the Goodwill (call them to check if they take this stuff) or ask your neighbors if they or their kids would like the USB HDDs. You don't have to be at the computer during the erase, and the erase doesn't preclude your use of your computer during the erase. You could sell it on Craigslist for, say $3 (a little higher if you want to filter out more unreliable responses). Don't advertize in their Free category as you get lots of calls from kooks and the majority of appointments for pickup for free stuff are no-shows, so you waste your time being around at the pickup time. When they come to pick it up then just give it to them for free. Don't dole out your phone number in the Craigslist ad as there are folks using Craigslist to harvest phone numbers. Use a temporary e-mail address or an e-mail alias (e.g., spamgourmet.com) specific to only that Craigslist ad, and ONLY communicate via e-mail (say that in the ad to avoid some of the harvesters and eliminate the texters that can try to harvest you that way). When the ad is over, kill the temporary e-mail account (be polite to the provider) or kill the e-mail alias. Don't give out your true e-mail address! Note: Craiglist eventually adopted Spamgourmet for their e-mail aliasing system: replies go back through the aliasing system instead of direct from your client that could expose your true e-mail address. It works for the sellers to hide their true e-mail address but I'm not sure if inquiries sent by potential buyers get aliased. |
#3
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Fast way to wipe an external HDD?
Kirk Bubul wrote:
I have recently acquired 2 new WD My Passport 4 TB external hard drives. I really like their small size, different colors, and the fact that they get their power from the USB 3.0 cable plugged into the USB port on my desktop - no separate power cord and little brick to crawl around plugging into an electrical outlet. Hopefully it's not as picky about cable make/length as the USB 2.0 USB-powered drive that I use. That's an old WD 320GB one though. I back up all my computers onto it in duplicate and still have plenty of room, no idea what most individuals need TB drives for. I have three old external hard drives that I would like to retire. The largest is 3 TB and the smallest is 1 TB. One is an old and slow USB 2.0. I've tried using several different free wipe programs, but all seem to require over 15 hours to do a one-cycle wipe on the smallest drive. I'd like quicker. Question: Is here a good free wipe program that would wipe these external drives in less than a workday? Once wiped, I will throw these old drives away unless someone speaks up and will pay for the shipping charges to get them from me to them. If you're tossing them, you could just go for the old "drill a hole through it" method. If your data was important enough for someone to analyse the remains of the platters in a lab, you wouldn't be worried about waiting a few hours. Sticking with electronic methods, you basically wait as long as you want depending on how secure you want the erasure to be. If you have a complicated partition layout on there, simply writing random data to the partition table before reformatting would be enough to make it darn annoying for anyone trying to recover the data easily. In Linux this could be done easily with "dd". To write over everything you're just going to be limited to the speed of the drives. If you're adventurous you could pull apart the enclosures to see if the drives themselves are actually SATA and plugged into a SATA-USB adapter. In that case using the direct SATA connection may make things go faster. With "dd" there'd also be nothing to stop you picking random bits of the drive to write over and leaving the rest alone, if you so desired. It would be a funny approach, but it's the only way to improve speed if data throughput is the bottleneck. Oh, except some drives do come with built-in erasure routines in their own firmware that can be triggered by software released by the drive manufacturer. That would sure be quicker because the random data to write is generated by the drive itself, it doesn't need to come from the computer. It's only some drives though, I've never had a chance to try it myself. -- __ __ #_ |\| | _# |
#4
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Fast way to wipe an external HDD?
On 1/13/19 10:28 AM, Kirk Bubul wrote:
Question: Is here a good free wipe program that would wipe these external drives in less than a workday? Once wiped, I will throw these old drives away unless someone speaks up and will pay for the shipping charges to get them from me to them. Thanks in advance for your help. I think there are some utilities that can give the drive a command to write zeros (or otherwise) erase itself. Hopefully you can give the drive the command and then otherwise ignore it for a while and then check it's status later. The key being the drive does the erasing, not your computer over the slower USB 2.0 interface. It's not DoD grade erasure (I digress), but it will prevent casual users from accessing the data. -- Grant. . . . unix || die |
#5
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Fast way to wipe an external HDD?
Grant Taylor wrote:
On 1/13/19 10:28 AM, Kirk Bubul wrote: Question: Is here a good free wipe program that would wipe these external drives in less than a workday? Once wiped, I will throw these old drives away unless someone speaks up and will pay for the shipping charges to get them from me to them. Thanks in advance for your help. I think there are some utilities that can give the drive a command to write zeros (or otherwise) erase itself. Hopefully you can give the drive the command and then otherwise ignore it for a while and then check it's status later. The key being the drive does the erasing, not your computer over the slower USB 2.0 interface. It's not DoD grade erasure (I digress), but it will prevent casual users from accessing the data. https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-secure-erase-2626004 I remember the HDDerase program (to issue the Secure Erase command directly to the ATA drive) but it is no longer available (get "page not found" at http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml). While there are some generic tools to do a Secure Erase, maybe you're expected to now use a utility from the drive manufacturer. https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebas...ID=1211#windlg WDC has an erase function in their Data Lifeguard software; however, when I read its instructions, it seems it does a logical erase (because it is showing progress) rather than issuing a Secure Erase (which doesn't need any monitoring although I suppose that would be handy to inform the user when the Secure Erase got completed). Seagate has their SeaTools and Samsung has their Magician but they aren't clear if they issue the Secure Erase command or perform a logical erase where software is required to perform each write. If you are using whole-disk encryption, you don't have to erase at all. No one else is going to have the passphrase to unlock (decrypt) the drive. For example: https://www.seagate.com/tech-insight...ive-master-ti/ (all it does is change the encryption key [to an unknown random value] so neither you nor anyone else can decrypt the drive) A Secure Erase is still going to be slow. It still takes time to write zero bits everywhere on the disk. It only does a one-pass write of zeros. While not the greatest method for secure erase (one pass of zeros, one pass of ones, and then a pass of random bits is better), there is definitely no reason to use the insane Gutmann method which applied only to the ancient RLL drives and not to today's drive. A set of precision torx screwdrivers, dismantling the HDD and removing the platters, and grinding the platters will take a hell of lot less time than a logical wipe or using Secure Erase. |
#6
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Fast way to wipe an external HDD?
On 2019-01-13 18:28, Kirk Bubul wrote:
I have recently acquired 2 new WD My Passport 4 TB external hard drives. I really like their small size, different colors, and the fact that they get their power from the USB 3.0 cable plugged into the USB port on my desktop - no separate power cord and little brick to crawl around plugging into an electrical outlet. I have three old external hard drives that I would like to retire. The largest is 3 TB and the smallest is 1 TB. One is an old and slow USB 2.0. I've tried using several different free wipe programs, but all seem to require over 15 hours to do a one-cycle wipe on the smallest drive. I'd like quicker. Question: Is here a good free wipe program that would wipe these external drives in less than a workday? Once wiped, I will throw these old drives away unless someone speaks up and will pay for the shipping charges to get them from me to them. Thanks in advance for your help. I would suggest buying an USB 3.0 enclosure for that USB 2.0 drive. You will get practically a new HDD. |
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