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Can DBAN damage a hard drive?

M

ManBearPig

Diamond Member
Whenever I wipe an HDD with DBAN to send it back/give it to someone/whatever, I always wonder if I could damage that drive if I use too many passes. Is that possible?

For that matter, if one keeps writing and then deleting large files from a hard drive, could it damage it? I've heard the phrase "wear the hard drive down" but I don't know what that means.

Thanks bros
 
No.

DBAN disk writes are no different from OS disk writes, they just:
- are done to every sector to make sure no existing parts of files are left to be found by un-erase / recovery utilities
- are done with multiple patterns to make it much more difficult to recover traces of old writes (which no one would do for a home user's disk drive)
 
SSD drives are only capable of a limited number of write operations, so DBAN will eat away some life from an SSD.

A spinning disk should not wear from DBAN. I'm sure that heavy write operations do wear a drive a little more than sitting idle, but I doubt it's noticeable unless you run DBAN for weeks nonstop. If my disk died while running DBAN, I'd be happy -- if it can't handle a few hours of continuous use it's practically dead already.

--- edit ---

Also, government and corporations who are really concerned about security do not trust DBAN to wipe SSDs. Since SSDs do wear leveling, DBAN is not guaranteed to touch ever block on the HD. From what I've seen, people very concerned about security will only "erase" an SSD by mechanical destruction.
 
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> SSD drives are only capable of a limited number of write operations, so DBAN will eat away some life from an SSD.

True, but (say) 5 passes over the RAM out of the 2,000+ minimum even the cheapest flash survives is nothing to worry about unless you run DBAN every day.

With a SSD I'd worry more that DBAN isn't really working, that the drive's firmware is causing it to not really erase the old data.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...rogram-like-DBAN-What-could-i-Use-*Important*
 
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kazaam said:
Whenever I wipe an HDD with DBAN to send it back/give it to someone/whatever, I always wonder if I could damage that drive if I use too many passes. Is that possible?
Click to expand...
DBAN is only dangerous to data not hardware.
HDs can die during DBAN writes. But in those cases, they could have just as easily died during a defragging.
 
Blain said:
DBAN is only dangerous to data not hardware.
HDs can die during DBAN writes. But in those cases, they could have just as easily died during a defragging.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup::thumbsup: If DBAN "kills" a drive, it was on its way out in the first place.
 
Let's say about speed...could it slow down the drive, but not necessarily kill it?

The guy who mentioned wearing the drive out probably had no idea what he was talking about but the idea is in my head lol.
 
> Let's say about speed...could it slow down the drive, but not necessarily kill it?

No.

It just writes new stuff to the drive so the old stuff on the drive can't be read by someone else. Nothing magic going on, no hoodoo that curses your disk.
 
Okie dokie, thanks fellas. I figured this was the case but some internet retard put a seed of doubt in my mind. Appreciate it!
 
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