erasing a nas drive permanently?

[ColinTaylor]

@ColinTaylor, not for SSD's.

I was responding to your statement "You can't securely erase an HDD", which is not true.

 

[L&LD]

I guess your version of securely erase is different from what I know it as.

Wiping an HDD isn't what you do to an SSD. You Securely Erase it.

Same results in the end (data unrecoverable) but if you routinely Wipe an SSD you are not only taking the few nand cycles each cell has, away, but you are also degrading the performance of that SSD too. A Secure Erase ensures data is unrecoverable and gives back 'like new' performance too for SSD's.

 

[ColinTaylor]

I'm not disputing anything you're saying about SSDs.

There's a difference between "wiping" a hard drive and "securely erasing" it. The phrase "securely erase" has been used in relation to HDDs for decades and predates SSD's use. There's even a "Secure Erase" ATA command that has been built into HDDs since 2001.

 

[L&LD]

What is that difference?

 

[ColinTaylor]

What is that difference?

Most people would call "wiping" a disk as either reformatting it (full) or using a program/utility (e.g. dd) to write zeros (or some other value) across the entire capacity of the disk. That is not classified as a "secure erase" because forensic techniques may be used to retrieve some of the data.

This is where tools like DBAN or the ATA Secure Erase command come in. They obliterate all of the information so that it is completely unrecoverable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDDerase
https://cmrr.ucsd.edu/_files/data-sanitization-tutorial.pdf

Personally when I've been decommissioning dozens of servers with a hundred or so HDDs I preferred the "drop it from head height onto concrete" technique.

 

[L&LD]

@ColinTaylor, thanks for the links.

That certainly looks outdated to me? HDDerase is not being updated since 2008 and the pdf file link doesn't seem to contain newer information than 2006 or so?

No worries. I learned something new here, once again.

 

[ColinTaylor]

That certainly looks outdated to me? HDDerase is not being updated since 2008 and the pdf file link doesn't seem to contain newer information than 2006 or so?

That's kind of the point of creating an ANSI standard. This stuff was all sorted out nearly 20 years ago. But you can see from my earlier links that the likes of Western Digital provide their own "modern" utilities that just do the same thing.

 

[dosborne]

You can't securely erase an HDD. Only an SSD is securely erasable if that feature is built-in to its firmware.

Yes, you can

I have a secure erase utility approved for use by CSIS and the CSE here in Canada.

 

[dosborne]

Personally when I've been decommissioning dozens of servers with a hundred or so HDDs I preferred the "drop it from head height onto concrete" technique.

We used a degausser and then drilled holes through the platters for permanent decommissioning
Did some testing where we had to drop test drives and laptops. Blew through $100k of equipment in an hour. Surprisingly, a few HDD units would survive the test you described.

 

[Deldarius]

While dropping drives usually works on rust, I prefer more aggressive tactics.
I put on some gloves and goggles, grab a piece of plywood and stick the drives on it. Then I whip out my trusty 5lb sledge named "Malice" and proceed to turn them drives into cyberpunk maracas. A round robin of whacks around the spindle until it sounds like mom's china closet after you played kickball in the dining room when you were ten, then beat that spindle like it owes you money. Both sides of the drive get treated alike...with prejudice. The control board gets it's own loving too. Nothing survives. Then they go off to recycling.

I do a similar job on SSD's as well. Very therapeutic

If some alphabet letter outfit or dirtbag really wants to play Humpty Dumpty with one of my drives after all that, all the more power to them. I would love to get my hands on a small cement mixer though, to put them through a tumble cycle or two. Just to be certain.

 

[CaptainSTX]

On small drives that have no future use in addition to the drill and hammer I drop them into a bucket of water and let them sit for a week or more.

 

[Deldarius]

LOL, gives a new meaning to "spinning rust".

 

[L&LD]

I hope that is saltwater @CaptainSTX.

 

[dosborne]

I'm pretty sure a blow torch to the platters would be pretty effective too

Although I never got to use it personally, one DND office I worked at had a shredder that took care of many things including decommissioned HDDs.

 

[Deldarius]

I would love to see somebody rig up a shredder so every time something is thrown in you would hear Cookie Monster making commentary. COOOOOOKIEEEEEE!!!!!

 

[KRDucky]

DBAN the drive with a DoD 3220.22 algo wipe