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Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing harddisks?

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On Mon, Apr 02, 2018 at 09:40:40PM +0800, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming wrote:
> Good evening from Singapore!
> 
> The foremost question which I want to ask is, what is the universal
> (world wide) understanding behind degaussing hard drives?
> 
[Snip long and entertaining problem description]
> 
> Please advise.
> 
My preference is to first thoroughly shred the device (for traditional
spinning disk, as these utilities are not especially effective on solid
state media thanks to write leveling):

sudo shred -n 37 -v -z /dev/sda
(or alternatively, boot a DBAN disk and use its wipe function)

Then, if it has ATA secure erase (hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep -i erase), I
also wipe it like so:

hdparm --security-set-pass password /dev/sda
hdparm --security-erase-enhanced password /dev/sda

It is necessary to first set the password, assuming it has not
previously been set, or the drive will just return an error.

Also, the ATA enhanced erase is, as far as I know, the best option for
wiping an SSD. Assuming, that is, that you do not want to physically
shred/pulverize the device.

As an interesting note, the enhanced erase takes on the order of ~3
*hours* for a decent sized (e.g., 2 TB) HDD, but on the order of ~3
*minutes* for an SSD of the same size.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

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Thread

What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing harddisks? Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming <tdteoenming@gmail.com> - 2018-04-02 15:50 +0200
  Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind  degaussing harddisks? Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2018-04-02 16:10 +0200
    Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind  degaussing harddisks? Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz> - 2018-04-02 23:30 +0200
  Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind  degaussing harddisks? Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2018-04-02 17:50 +0200
    Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing harddisks? John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2018-04-02 18:30 +0200
      Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind  degaussing harddisks? Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-04-02 19:20 +0200
        Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind  degaussing harddisks? Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2018-04-02 19:30 +0200
        Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing harddisks? John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2018-04-02 20:10 +0200
          Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind  degaussing harddisks? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-04-03 17:20 +0200
            Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind   degaussing harddisks? Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2018-04-03 18:00 +0200
      Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind  degaussing harddisks? Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2018-04-02 19:30 +0200
        Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing harddisks? John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2018-04-02 21:50 +0200
  Re: What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing harddisks? rhkramer@gmail.com - 2018-04-02 19:40 +0200

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