[[ solved ]]
I have a stack of SATA hard drives that I need to erase.
I have a USB drive dock, a box that a drive can be set into that connects to my computer via USB-3.
I am using DD to write zeros to the raw device, in this case, /dev/sdf.
No matter the actual size of the drive dd stops at about 3 to 7 gb. These are 300 gb to 3 TB drives.
I am not mounting the drives, but I do ensure they are visible to the system with lsblk. To change drives I turn off the dock. The drive then disappears from lsblk. When I insert a different drive and turn the dock back on again /dev/sdf re-appears.
Are all my drives bad? If they are I will need to have them “professionally” destroyed at about $25 a drive.
Next Update –
I started with a USB to SATA adapter that looked like a small box with a SATA connector on one edge and a USB cable coming out of one side, it had a power supply that connected to the small box - everything out in the open.
Then I went to a drive toaster - a dock where you slot the drive into a hole in the top of the dock, again powered and USB-3 (blue connector)
As of this update I have opened my USB-3 external drive and removed it’s native drive and put in one of the 1TB drives I wish to erase. I also switched to my production laptop. Now I have issued a dd command and it has written so far 28GB from /dev/urandom.
I think this will finally work. - I am marking this solved.
idk man, if there’s sensitive data on those drives i’d always err on the side of caution, there are much cheaper ways of doing secure data deletion, you can dismantle a drive with a screwdriver, or core them with a drill (my old worksplace had a hydraulic press they ran batches of drives through)
if you wanted something less intrusive there are bootable images like DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) that handle secure erasure pretty well, you can enforce multiple passes, and even connect multiple drives at once
if the data isn’t that sensitive I always like trying to unpartition/repartion the drive, then see if you can use dd to fill the drive with zeros/random data
It’s not too sensitive, but since the drives were part of my dad’s estate I want to be sure. I would hate to have to turn these drives (esp the 1+ TB drives) into e-waste.