On Wednesday 08 Aug 2012 05:21:31 Adam Carter wrote: > > To wipe a drive use dban. - live CD which uses (US) gov approved > > standards of wipe methods/patterns. > > Or shred, which comes with coreutils. > > > dd is only going to show sectors on a failed drive - too late! > > > > To explain, modern drives have a store of locations they can use to > > transparently replace any failed locations (apparently similar to the > > way SSD's do it) - the internal drive electronics handle this and its > > not visible externally though smart data seems to show it, but as google > > says, smart is a bit suspect. The problem of a bad sector will only > > show once all the reserved locations are used up, by which time the > > drive is usually in rampant failure. > > > > I do suspect this is one reason for googles results - actual failures of > > the media (as against the motors/electronics are much as they always > > have been, but the drives are not reporting them until its too late. > > Ahh - go to know. My reasoning assumed that smart reports all remaps.
May be it does, but I understand that dd or shred won't overwrite them, or any bad blocks. You'll need the hdparm ATA secure erase (or enhanced secure erase) feature for that. BTW, Dale make sure that you plug the drive in a SATA controller for running the hdparm erase function. It has been reported that doing this using a USB port will brick the drive! -- Regards, Mick
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