enhanced secure erase on ATA

[irongeek at irongeek.com (Adrian Crenshaw)]

Moulton is also the guy that pointed me at MHDD. :) I'd take his SANS class,
if only work would pay for it. :)

Adrian

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Dave Hull <dphull at trustedsignal.com> wrote:

> 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
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