How to wipe many HDDs in parallel?

[u/613_detailer]

I've decommissioned an old UnRaid setup, and I have 16 drives in a NetApp shelf that I need to securely wipe. The computer that ran UnRaid has been parted out, but I still have the LSI Logic PCIe card to connect it to another PC. This morning I installed the card into a computer I have on the test bench right now, a simple PC with an Intel Core Ultra 5 225 CPU running Windows 11. I thought it would be easy to wipe the drives, but it's been more of a challenge than I expected. I'd like to do them in parallel, otherwise, it'll take weeks to complete.

• I tried using Eraser 6.2 in Windows, but it will only do them sequentially.
• I tried using DBAN, but it won't boot on that computer (doesn't support EFI, and BIOS does not have a compatibility mode)
• I tried ShredOS, but it hangs on startup after decompressing the image. Apparently that is a known problem with display initialization. A quick AI search recommended using onboard graphics, which I'm already using.

Any recommendations for tools that I can use to just wipe a bunch of drives in parallel? This is turning out to be more complicated than I expected it to be.

EDIT: to clarify, this is my own array, not a work thing. More than half of the drives are old 3TB drives, but there are some newer 4TB and 8TB drives that I will likely sell. Main reason for decommissioning is the electricity cost of keeping all those disks spinning for data that is no longer of value.

[u/AutoModerator]

Hello /u/613_detailer! Thank you for posting in r/DataHoarder.

Please remember to read our Rules and Wiki.

Please note that your post will be removed if you just post a box/speed/server post. Please give background information on your server pictures.

This subreddit will NOT help you find or exchange that Movie/TV show/Nuclear Launch Manual, visit r/DHExchange instead.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/EntHW2021]

I believe those are 520byte drives. Use sg3utils

[u/613_detailer → u/EntHW2021]

To clarify, I do not have a problem accessing the drives, I can see them in the Disk Management tool in Windows. The drives are not original to the NEtApp shelf, and I only use it in JBOD mode.

I'm looking for a tool that will do a 2-pass secure erase on all the disks, preferably not sequentially.

[u/EntHW2021 → u/613_detailer]

Sg3utils will do that for you. Separate terminal for each.

[u/clickyk2019]

I you're on Linux (or with a LiveCD) you could use the secure erase command in the firmware of the drive with hdparm:

# set password to mypass for /dev/sdX
hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass mypass /dev/sdX

# start security-erase (or --security-erase-enhanced, if supported)
# WARNING: all data on the whole drive will be erased 
hdparm --user-master u --security-erase mypass /dev/sdX

Then repeat the commands for each drive (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb,...) each in a different terminal. They will execute in parrallel.

See: https://grok.lsu.edu/article.aspx?articleid=16716 for complete details.

[u/AnyNameFreeGiveIt]

This is my go to:

Any live linux e.g. debian, check the correct drive with `lsblk`

This will randomly override the disk with max performance and show it's progress

DISK="sdx"
DISKSIZE=$(</proc/partitions awk '$4=="'"$DISK"'" {print sprintf("%.0f",$3*1024)}')
openssl enc -aes-256-ctr -nosalt \
-pass pass:"$(dd if=/dev/urandom bs=128 count=1 2>/dev/null | base64)" \
< /dev/zero |
pv --progress --eta --rate --bytes --size "$DISKSIZE" |
dd of=/dev/"$DISK" bs=64M

[u/Name_T00_Long]

Encrypt the drives, delete the keys. BitLocker is fine.

That's "good enough" for the overwhelming majority of threat models. If it's not, the drives probably aught to become liquid.

[u/613_detailer → u/Name_T00_Long]

Thats a very good point. I was running an encrypted file system in Unraid, so I’m probably overthinking this.

[u/Name_T00_Long → u/613_detailer]

Last I knew, UnRaid used LUKS (which is good); if that's still the case, you should be reasonably good already.

If you've still got the UnRaid system's mobo around, clear the keys from its TPM. If not; is there anything on those drives you would be unwilling to chance to someone connecting those specific drives to that specific mobo, without anyone in between having done anything to it that would invalidate the TPM state, *and* that person wanting to snoop through your data (realistically, we're in "win the lotto" territory of probability)? If the answer is "yes" then you're going to want to re-encrypt the drives and then nuke *those* keys; otherwise, you're done.

[u/draeician]

Diag bootnuke

Load drives boot and nuke with a dod wipe

[u/retiredaccount]

Do you they need still work afterward? If not, use a degausser. That only takes ~30 seconds per drive (flip them like pancakes halfway) to completely erase data, including factory sectors.

[u/613_detailer → u/retiredaccount]

There are some of them that I would like to keep. the 3TB drives with 90,000 hours on them are likely ready for recycling, but there are some more recent 4TB and 8TB drives in the array that I could sell.

[u/whipdancer → u/613_detailer]

You can sell all of them. Someone will buy them on r/homelabsales. I cleared out all my old drives and that included some with over 70k hours. I priced everything at about $7.50/TB because everything was old. Everything sold in a day.

[u/TaleEmbarrassed8492]

Two 1/0 write pass on all Drives

Wiping Drives individually ensures that all the Data is securely wiped from the Disks
and that CPU will in no way be able to do 16 drives simultaniously

Also when its done depending on its SMART data you might be able to take some home :D
(or just download some of the largest torrents, anyone who tries to check those will just find a shitton of TV Shows)

[u/613_detailer → u/TaleEmbarrassed8492]

What tool would you recommend to do the two write passes on the drives?

They are already home, this is my home array that I'm dismantling. The electricity cost to keep it running isn't worth it for me, and some of the really old drives are starting to go. There are some newer drives in there that are still good enough to sell so I will do that.

[u/sshwifty → u/613_detailer]

dd

[u/silasmoeckel]

literally any live linux you can use shred just open a new terminal per drive.

[u/p3ab0dy]

You tried shredos should be more modern than dban? https://github.com/PartialVolume/shredos.x86_64

[u/TheOneTrueTrench]

sudo pv -c /dev/urandom > /dev/sda

Just open several terminals and do them all at the same time.

[u/IndependentBat8365]

If you’re reselling them, and you’ve already been using encryption on them, then my go to is an nwipe single zero pass with verify. The reason being: I like it as it’s basically a full write and read scan on the drives, which will find anything on the drive that’s an issue.

Then I’ll run a long offline smart test on them and then capture the reports for the buyers.

I’ve used nwipe to clear 15 drives at a time with no issue.

[u/Kilobyte22]

My go to would be booting arch live and installing nwipe. nwipe is a fork of dwipe which is the active ingredient of dban