enhanced secure erase on ATA

[dphull at trustedsignal.com (Dave Hull)]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Adrian Crenshaw<irongeek at irongeek.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> The tool HDDErase from http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
> is often mentioned as being capable of doing this, but it fails on most of
> my hardware. I've had better luck with MHDD
> (http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/). MHDD says it's
> using BIOS functions, but does this mean that MHDD is doing an "enhanced
> secure erase" like HDDErase? As in, is it also wiping remapped blocks?

According to the docs on the web site for the tool, it can and will
use the BIOS level secure erase function unless you tell it not to.
Given that, I'd say yes, it's wiping bad sectors too since that's a
feature of the BIOS level secure erase.

Thanks for the link, I have used the first tool before but hadn't
heard about this hddguru.com version. It would be nice if BIOS
manufacturers would just include this as an option in the BIOS menu.

As for being faster than DBAN, oh yeah, according to Moulton the ATA
command can wipe a 500GB drive in 2.5 hours. I haven't had to wipe
anything that large yet.

-- 
Dave Hull