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That was true years ago, with far smaller disks.  I have read the data
from the control electronics, and you cannot get consistently readable
data from 1G+ disks.  The old tricks of using nickel power in naphtha
and so on for the disks of olden days, where you could get data no
longer work.

Writing three times on modern disks has a feel-good factor.  The
dod 5220.22 (dash M?) states specific things to do to erase a disk, but
I know of no disk people today who say you need to do that.

Disk technology has utterly changed in the last 15 years but the regs
for wiping them haven't.

You are right that physical destruction is best!  They make for great
targets, too.

--STeve Andre'


On 07/19/13 11:17, Isaac, Jeremy wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">
A zero fill isn't enough if you have access to the circuit board of the hard drive and can read the analog signals from the heads.  Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN) defaults to three random write passes and one zero fill, which is plenty.  I've used it on a PowerEdge 2550, 2650, and 2850 with success, so it should work on just about anything except any SPARC or POWER servers.
 
To get roughly the same thing out of dd, you could set if=/dev/urandom, run it three times and then set if=/dev/zero.  It's not the same quality of randomness, but by then, the drive is certainly nuked.  A metal shredder is way faster, though.
 
From: STeve Andre' [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 6:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Proper Disposal of old Server hard Drives?

On 07/17/13 10:37, Al Puzzuoli wrote:

Hi everyone,

I understand that when old computers and servers go to salvage, the drives in those computers are wiped, but what about free floating drives? We have several old drives that were formerly  part of an array. If we pass those onto salvage, will they be disposed of securely?

Thanks,

 

Al Puzzuoli

Michigan State University

Information Technologist                                       http://www.rcpd.msu.edu

Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities  517-884-1915 120 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI  48824-1033

 


Why don't you hook them up to any kind of unix like system and do
something like

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd0c bs=64k      (OpenBSD example)

to be sure?

--STeve Andre'