How can I destroy data on 3TB USB HD without pounding it to bits with hammer?

[Muse]

I have some data on the 3TB WD ELEMENTS HD that I'm sending to WD tomorrow after having received a WD 3TB My Book replacement (advanced replacement). Some of that data on the HD I'm sending back to them is a security concern. Should I first use WD Lifeguard Diagnostics to over-write the drive with zeros?

I copied over the data from the HD that's going bad to the replacement drive and most of it copied but for ~45 objects (files or directories, not sure) I got messages that the file names were too long, skip or cancel. What's that about, seems crazy. I had to skip or cancel those so I couldn't get all the data. Around 45GB copied, around 1GB did not copy. Probably I have that data elsewhere, but ...

 

[Elixer]

Depends on how big of a security concern it is, and just what type of data we are talking about.
If the HD still works, then you could wipe the drive, I assume it has bad sectors or something, and that is why the RMA ?
If not, then, a hammer works to 'secure erase' it into oblivion.

 

[hoorah]

BTW, you can use a free program called 'syncback' from 2brightsparks to copy long path name files. I have to use that for my fathers business file server because they refuse to shorten the pathnames .

Regardless, that doesn't have anything to do with zeroing the drive. I guess it depends on how much of a security concern it is and if the policy is yours or a customers policy. If its a customers, you'll obviously have to check to see what they require. Because of some clients, certain drives can never leave and require the 'hammer' erase method.

 

[Charlie98]

Security concern = wipe drive.

 

[Muse]

Depends on how big of a security concern it is, and just what type of data we are talking about.
If the HD still works, then you could wipe the drive, I assume it has bad sectors or something, and that is why the RMA ?
If not, then, a hammer works to 'secure erase' it into oblivion.

Well, I'm sending the drive to WD, so I assume they would look askance at a drive hammered into oblivion.

Yes, bad sector count throws a caution and this laptop offered to format the drive for me a couple of weeks ago and that was the last straw. Yesterday, I reconnected the drive to same laptop and it seemed to work OK, I copied all its data (well almost, see the OP), to the replacement drive. Now I figure I should overwrite all the data with zeros. The data isn't super sensitive, but someone who knew what they were doing might be able to fish out my CC numbers. There's a ton of personal data on it, but who on earth is that interested in me??? A super sleuth could maybe tease out my passwords. I'm intending to go to a password manager (Keepass or Lastpass I suppose, I have the threads bookmarked).

 

[Muse]

BTW, you can use a free program called 'syncback' from 2brightsparks to copy long path name files. I have to use that for my fathers business file server because they refuse to shorten the pathnames .

Regardless, that doesn't have anything to do with zeroing the drive. I guess it depends on how much of a security concern it is and if the policy is yours or a customers policy. If its a customers, you'll obviously have to check to see what they require. Because of some clients, certain drives can never leave and require the 'hammer' erase method.

Thanks, I'll look into that later today. WD wants the drive by July 7 or something, so I have time. I'll use syncback, then zero-write the drive and send to Riverside, CA via USPS.

 

[PliotronX]

Check out the Parted Magic Live CD with the secure erase option. This uses a hardware based ATA routine to write to every sector including bad sectors and it is faster than DBAN and nearly as fast as a single zero write but with equivalent security to DoD3.

 

[hoorah]

Well, I'm sending the drive to WD, so I assume they would look askance at a drive hammered into oblivion.

Well, yeah, thats the problem. If the data is enough of a security concern you have to sometimes forget any warranty exchange, although thats usually more often at the request of a customers policy.

If its just personal stuff I would DBAN or otherwise 0-write the drive and call it a day.

 

[Muse]

Well, yeah, thats the problem. If the data is enough of a security concern you have to sometimes forget any warranty exchange, although thats usually more often at the request of a customers policy.

If its just personal stuff I would DBAN or otherwise 0-write the drive and call it a day.

I'm using Syncback Free to make another copy of the going-bad HD to the replacement. It should be done in an hour or two (~45GB data). Hopefully, no hiccups, but I didn't get to deselect some weird stuff, such as system volume information folder, recycle bin, weird things I would never try to copy, so who knows what will happen?

When that's done (successful or not, I'm not going to sweat it too much), will either run DBAN (I've had a DBAN CD for a few years) or the Parted Magic Live CD, which I downloaded a few hours ago (haven't burned it to CD yet). I figure that will take a while to run, so I probably won't be mailing the HD to WD until Thursday (2 days).

 

[Muse]

On second thought, I think I'll skip the DBAN. My CD has my Sharpie admonition that all HD's will be wiped upon booting from the CD. That's not what I want!

 

[corkyg]

If you have CCleaner, it has a drive wipe capability. For 3 TB, it may take all day or night.

https://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/using-ccleaner/wiping-free-disk-space

 

[Muse]

Well, I just burned the Parted Magic Live CD, am about to boot from it. Assume I can secure erase the 3TB HD. I think I'll do it from my Win7 64 bit laptop, I don't use that alot.

 

[Muse]

Well, I just burned the Parted Magic Live CD, am about to boot from it. Assume I can secure erase the 3TB HD. I think I'll do it from my Win7 64 bit laptop, I don't use that alot.

Well, this is not working. Booted my Win7 64bit laptop to Parted Magic Live CD and I went to secure erase the 3TB USB HD after booting to Parted Magic Live CD and it failed. It said something about SMART data maybe having to do with it. There are two methods it could use (choose Yes or No, in an option), I tried both and neither succeeded in running it. So I Quit, then booted to Win7, the disk doesn't show up in Explorer. So, I run crystaldiskinfo and don't see it either (this is another machine, now, not my Win7 32bit laptop but my Win7 64bit laptop. I DL and install WD Lifeguard Diagnostics, run it, it sees the drive and the SMART data it shows, doesn't suggest anything. I go to write zeros to the drive, the whole drive and after a few seconds it goes "Fail." It said it could not delete partitions. The drive is not partitioned, it is set up as default. I don't know what to do at this point. Maybe I can go to the college radio station I work at and use their bulk eraser. We used to use that to erase magnetic tapes. It might (should) erase magnetic media, don't know if WD will appreciate that, but I don't care to send them a disk with my data on it. The bulk eraser puts out a strong electro-magnetic field... :\

 

[Muse]

Moved the drive back to my Win7 32bit laptop, crystaldiskinfo sees it, WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics throws a "Delete Partitions Error!" when I try to do a full erase (write zeros) on it, does it virtually immediately. This is screwy!

 

[Muse]

So, reading some stuff online I'm motivated to go into Windows' Disk Management. When I do that I'm prompted to initialize the disk, i.e. it's not seen as formatted. I play along but it doesn't work. A little window pops up and says "The media is write protected."

Now, crystaldiskinfo doesn't see the disk. In Disk Management it says the drive is "unallocated" and "Not initialized."

WD DLGDIAG sees it, it passes the opening test. I'm now running the Quick SMART test. It does not show up in Explorer. It passes the Quick SMART test. Tried to write zeros again, get the Delete Partitions Error again. Looking at the SMART data I see several X's in addition to the check marks. I suppose this means that those characteristics are not OK.

Should I try doing the Extended Test in WD DLGDIAG? Maybe that will fix whatever's blocking doing anything with the disk...

Really, I don't give a damn about what's on the drive now, I just want to obliterate the data, have no idea how to do that short of a hammer or maybe the aforementioned EM bulk eraser. This is magnetic media, right?

 

[Muse]

BUMP... please help! My last few posts detail how I'm unable to wipe the HD. I need to do something. Will visit the radio station tonight and if I can't get a different idea of what to do/try, will expose the HD to a high A/C electromagnetic field by using the 30+ year old cartridge tape bulk eraser at the station in an endeavor to erase the data on the HD. I need to send it back to Western Digital as I have an advanced replacement. I'm wondering what they'll do if they receive the old HD after it's been bulk erased. If they hope to resell it, it may not be possible, for one thing, is my thinking...

 

[ignatzatsonic]

See if you can get anywhere with Partition Wizard 8.1.1

http://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

If you don't care about the data and only want to erase it, you don't have much to lose.

PW may be able to repair the partition to the point where it can be deleted or write zeroes.

I think the WD Extended test only looks for bad sectors and replaces them if found. I ran it recently and it took 7 hours on a 3 TB drive.

I've used bulk tape erasers on tape, but have heard that they aren't particularly effective on hard drives. Pound on Google for details.

 

[Muse]

Thanks. I'll try PW. I don't care about the data now, I got all data off the drive yesterday using Syncback Free, recommended in this thread. Right now the HD is evidently unusable, however there's data on there I don't want to fall into the wrong hands, thus my concern. Evidently, Parted Magic Live CD did something to the HD when I ran the Secure Erase functionality that made it unusable entirely, but it did not succeed in erasing the HD, I'm all but certain.

The bulk eraser I'm talking about may be more powerful, don't know. Anyway, I'll try PW, will google bulk erasers as you suggest... thanks again!

 

[Red Squirrel]

I usually write on it with a sharpie "PLEASE DESTROY". Of course you kinda have to trust that they'll actually do that... If it's defective then chances are probably fairly good that it will get destroyed anyway. All my data drives use raid though, and OS drives don't have sensitive info on them, so for me I don't have as much to worry about. Even if the drive is not destroyed not much can be done with a single drive from a big raid array.

 

[Muse]

I'm RMAing the drive, so I don't want WD to say "you destroyed the HD, so we're not going to credit the RMA and we are charging you for the replacement drive." Really, it's a little paranoid. Technically, yes, it's possible for someone to retrieve credit card numbers and theoretically even my passwords, but unlikely, very unlikely it would happen. Still, I'd like to blank the data. I figure if I bulk erase with a degaussing bulk eraser the drive will be permanently unusable (not sure of this), but it will look normal. It's like irradiation, it will kill it but it will appear normal. Irradiating a living organism will lead to rot, but degaussing a HD will not!

Anyway, I'll try Partition Wizard and see if I can get the HD working to the extent where I can write zeros to it. Maybe I should call Western Digital technical support and run this problem by them and see what they say. i'm sure they can sympathize if not help.

This page suggests that degaussing can do the trick, although it appears to be overkill:

Hard Drive Erasers vs Degaussers

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Here's another highly regarded hard disk tool. I've heard a lot about it, but never used it.

It may be useful to restore or repair your partition so you can then do what you need to do.

Or you may be able to use it to otherwise reduce the manufacturer's chances of getting at your data--maybe making them give up more quickly if they get nosy.

It's probably cryptic, so you are on your own. I don't know if it has help files, but you could Google.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Here's a guide for PW if you haven't seen it:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/recover-files-by-partition-recovery.html

 

[Muse]

Here's a guide for PW if you haven't seen it:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/recover-files-by-partition-recovery.html

Hadn't seen it, I just DLed it, installed, connected the HD, ran PW. Seems pretty intuitive. It identifies the HD as "Bad Disk" !!! I'm running the partition recovery on the Full Disk, using the Quick option, not the Full option, which I can try if the Quick option fails. So far it still shows 0% progress, which does not inspire. :\

 

[silicon]

Hadn't seen it, I just DLed it, installed, connected the HD, ran PW. Seems pretty intuitive. It identifies the HD as "Bad Disk" !!! I'm running the partition recovery on the Full Disk, using the Quick option, not the Full option, which I can try if the Quick option fails. So far it still shows 0% progress, which does not inspire. :\

if the data is really important and sensitive then destroy the hard drive as seems to be the only option left to you and absorb the cost of a new one. With the right tools probably a low level read write could be performed to permanently erase all data...but you tried this it seems. You could try to freeze the drive by putting it in the freezer for several hours, thats not a joke, and then try to access the drive to delete the data. Google freezing hard drive.

 

[Carson Dyle]

You keep credit card numbers and passwords on your disk drives?

Really?