On Tue, 2012-08-07 at 21:19 -0500, Dale wrote: > Paul Hartman wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 5:26 PM, Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I didn't know you could do low level formats anymore. Really? What > >> package provides that? Hmmm, I'm thinking about those HOURS spent > >> formatting a 100Mb drive and then thinking about how long it will take > >> to do a 3Tb drive. O_O I mean really O_O. LOL > > hdparm provides it. Do a search for "ATA secure erase" or "enhanced > > secure erase". It is as close as there is to a low-level format in ... > > I have seen where people use dd to do this sort of thing to. I read > somewhere that if you do a dd and put in all 1's, then all 0's then back > again that it is very hard to get any data back off the drive. I think > if you do it like over a dozen times, it is deemed impossible to get > anything back. I think that is the Government standard of it's gone. > > 4 or 5 hours huh. I guess drives are a lot faster now. Back in the > late 80's or early 90's, it took that long for those whimpy little 100Mb > drives. Ooops, my ages is showing again. lol > > I got to go read up on hdparm. I already have it installed here. I'm > not planning to use this part but do want to read up on this. > > Thanks. > > Dale > > :-) :-) >
Goggle have a well known document (http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf) where they analysed hard drive failures for a very large number of drives ... the basic upshot is that a very large portion of failures happen with no pre-warning, so testing a drive like you are proposing not going to prove a thing. They also found that smart (is quite dumb) and its tests were of little use. And high temperatures and work loads were also not a reliable guide to trends in failure rates, both of which which surprised me. Some of those bathtub curves that I was trained on when setting maintenance schedules dont hold water here! This anaysis of the paper looks quite good if you want the lite view: http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/19/googles-disk-failure-experience/ BillK BillK
