Timeline for How can I speed up secure erasing of a disk?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 1, 2024 at 2:36 | comment | added | bilogic | I think it is helpful to add not to run these commands via an USB interface as mentioned in the link since it can potentially brick the disk. | |
| Jan 3, 2024 at 6:00 | comment | added | Kantium | Was about 12.5h with dd for my 1.5To HDD, but tooks only 4.2h with this Sata Secure Erase method for the same drive, nice | |
| Nov 23, 2019 at 11:12 | comment | added | Mr. T | Secure erase still fails to securely erase in a number of scenarios. Some drives, for example, will stop the secure erase the second they hit a bad block, leaving the drive partially erased. The only responsible thing to do is to use a program that wipes and verifies the wipe. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 20:28 | comment | added | Michael Hampton | @cartographer It seems you're referring to SSDs, while this question and most of the discussion has been about spinning rust. I'd be interested in hearing about more modern rotational drives which don't implement secure erase properly. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 19:50 | comment | added | cartographer | @MichaelHampton Actually, since many times the advanced erase uses a reset of the internal encryption key, effectively relying on the drive encryption (which has been known to be problematic), you should be careful. If security is a serious concern, I would use (software) full-disk encryption as suggested. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 19:04 | comment | added | Michael Hampton | @johndoe Nothing more is needed than to zero out all bits on the drive, unless you are trying to erase ancient MFM/RLL drives and early IDE drives. But these don't have secure erase anyway. | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 18:42 | comment | added | john doe | Please note that ATA secure erase is implemented by the firmware of the drive, and there is no way to verify how they actually erase in most cases. Some vendors simply zero out all bits on the drive. Using an external tool such as dd is much safer | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 18:03 | history | edited | 200_success | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 12 characters in body |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 15:47 | comment | added | Colonel Thirty Two | You got the password wrong! It's supposed to be hunter2! /s | |
| Nov 21, 2019 at 13:01 | vote | accept | markgraf | ||
| Nov 21, 2019 at 4:28 | comment | added | Michael Hampton | It's important to note that secure erase can only run when the hard drive has a password set, and secure erasing the drive also erases the password that you just set. I should also note that some early SATA drives (from the 2000s) didn't implement it correctly and only erased part of the disk, or bricked themselves. I don't think that's a problem today, but if you really want to be sure, you should probably read out the entire drive afterward. For erasing a modern SSD this is the only thing you should be doing. | |
| Nov 20, 2019 at 14:36 | history | edited | 200_success | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 204 characters in body |
| Nov 20, 2019 at 14:30 | history | answered | 200_success | CC BY-SA 4.0 |