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[65.0.116.140]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id l10sm2131582ang.12.2012.08.07.19.19.01 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:19:02 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <5021CC94.3050701@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2012 21:19:00 -0500 From: Dale User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120717 Firefox/14.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.11 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Want to seriously test a NEW hard drive References: <501E6AFA.4000205@gmail.com> <50219626.5010806@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.4.3 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: a8f68674-db67-40e7-ae0a-0e78651f7cad X-Archives-Hash: c89d922214fe86e66e61695198acc53f Paul Hartman wrote: > On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 5:26 PM, Dale 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 > modern drives. It is basically a erase/format within the drive's > firmware, that resets it all back to factory, including bad sectors, > with the same pattern of 1's and 0's and everything. You can do it > with hdparm but it's tricky and contains many warnings about killing > your drive. It is considered the only "true" way to properly erase a > hard drive as anything else is just overwriting and does not > necessarily touch all the areas that the firmware can touch. I think > actual implementation of what the secure erases do varies from drive > to drive, but they'll all format the whole disk for sure. > > The parted magic live CD contains a GUI tool to automate it and it is > extremely simple to use. Choose your drive and go. On a 2tb drive I > think it took 4 or 5 hours when I ran it. There is absolutely no > feedback while it is running, so you're just waiting with no progress > indicator or anything. You can also do SMART tests from within the > parted magic live CD environment. And of course partitioning. :) > > That all being said, when performing this kind of operation I usually > like to use a live CD and unplug ALL OTHER HARD DRIVES except for the > one I'm going to destroy. I don't want to accidentally erase the wrong > drive. (In fact I have an old Pentium 4 computer with no HDDs that I > use solely for the purpose of testing live CDs, testing and formatting > drives, partitioning new drives before i put them into a production > machine) > > 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 :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!