Properly wiping a hard drive ?
mike cloaked
mike.cloaked at gmail.com
Sat Oct 9 16:38:18 UTC 2010
On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 9:29 AM, Linuxguy123 <linuxguy123 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-10-09 at 02:27 -0600, Linuxguy123 wrote:
>
>>
>> >From man hdparm:
>>
>> --security-erase PWD
>> Erase (locked) drive, using password PWD (DANGEROUS).
>> Password is given as an ASCII string and is padded
>> with NULs to reach 32 bytes. Use the special password
>> NULL to represent an empty password. The applicable
>> drive password is selected with the --user-master switch.
>> No other flags are permitted on the command line
>> with this one. THIS FEATURE IS EXPERIMENTAL AND NOT WELL
>> TESTED. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
>>
>>
>> In actual use:
>>
>> # hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sdd
>> security_password=""
>>
>> /dev/sdd:
>> Issuing SECURITY_ERASE command, password="", user=master
>> ERASE_PREPARE: Invalid exchange
>>
>> Why ????
>
> I have this drive connected via a USB adapter. Would that cause this
> problem ?
Yes in all probability - I have found that this does not work via such
adapters. Best bet - either boot a distro like parted.magic so you
can work on the internal drive when it is not in use, or remove the
drive from the machine and put it in a different machine where you can
run a live distro to execute the hdparm commands - note that some
BIOSes freeze out access to the Secure Erase commands (presumably so
viruses can't erase your drive!) - once you know there is a machine
where you can do this it is easy - generally older machines don't have
a restriction.
--
mike c
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