Secure Erase: How to erase a hard drive - HowFlow

Category: Storage | Tags: linux storage harddisk hdparm security erase comments

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HowFlow — If you want to erase all your data from a hard drive, hdparm is the right tool for this job.

Posted by

aroedl 8 months ago

Please DO NOT do this on a hard drive with valuable data on it

Boot your favorite Linux live CD and (given that your hard disk is called /dev/hda) enter



  hdparm -I /dev/hda

Have a look at the very last line. If you can see something like this, your drive has the necessary feature:



  66min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT.

or

  66min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 66min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.

Now you can erase your data with one of the following commands:



  hdparm --security-erase /dev/hda

or

  hdparm --security-erase-enhanced /dev/hda

The advantage of this procedure is that it even overwrites bad blocks. “Enhanced” means, that it overwrites the data with a random pattern.

Please DO NOT do this on a hard drive with valuable data on it You have been warned!

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