secure erase question comment

After my recent thread on DBAN regarding wiping the three USB 3 drives
before selling them, I decided to try secure erase using the Linux
version of parted magic. I booted up into Linux and parted magic using
the Ultimate Boot CD. I clicked on the erase disc icon on the desktop,
then chose secure erase. Surprisingly, both the internal ATA and
external USB 3 drive showed and there was a warning about USB drives not
being shown due to errors? Anyway, I decided to try a secure erase of
the USB 3 connected drive and I was presented with the option to do an
enhanced secure erase, which I chose. It took about 3 hours for a 500
GB drive, but the end result was that the program reported success and
the drive appears to be working. The big question is why the warning
about USB drives not appearing, yet my USB 3 not only showed but seemed
to allow the process to complete? Is it safe to securely erase the
other two USB 3 drives this way also? My only guess is that maybe the
program was referring to the slower USB 2/1, but not certain. Although
I had used DBAN on the drives, after recent discussion, I thought secure
erase might be the final step since it doesn't take that much more time,
but I want to make sure that the drives are not going to end up damaged
in some way. Comments welcome.

On 10/1/2018 11:46 PM, JBI wrote:
After my recent thread on DBAN regarding wiping the three USB 3 drives
before selling them, I decided to try secure erase using the Linux
version of parted magic.Â* I booted up into Linux and parted magic using
the Ultimate Boot CD.Â* I clicked on the erase disc icon on the desktop,
then chose secure erase.Â* Surprisingly, both the internal ATA and
external USB 3 drive showed and there was a warning about USB drives not
being shown due to errors?Â* Anyway, I decided to try a secure erase of
the USB 3 connected drive and I was presented with the option to do an
enhanced secure erase, which I chose.Â* It took about 3 hours for a 500
GB drive, but the end result was that the program reported success and
the drive appears to be working.Â* The big question is why the warning
about USB drives not appearing, yet my USB 3 not only showed but seemed
to allow the process to complete?Â* Is it safe to securely erase the
other two USB 3 drives this way also?Â* My only guess is that maybe the
program was referring to the slower USB 2/1, but not certain.Â* Although
I had used DBAN on the drives, after recent discussion, I thought secure
erase might be the final step since it doesn't take that much more time,
but I want to make sure that the drives are not going to end up damaged
in some way.Â* Comments welcome.

The only sure way of preventing data from being pulled out of a device
is to physically and completely damage the device!

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JBI wrote:
After my recent thread on DBAN regarding wiping the three USB 3 drives
before selling them, I decided to try secure erase using the Linux
version of parted magic. I booted up into Linux and parted magic using
the Ultimate Boot CD. I clicked on the erase disc icon on the desktop,
then chose secure erase. Surprisingly, both the internal ATA and
external USB 3 drive showed and there was a warning about USB drives not
being shown due to errors? Anyway, I decided to try a secure erase of
the USB 3 connected drive and I was presented with the option to do an
enhanced secure erase, which I chose. It took about 3 hours for a 500
GB drive, but the end result was that the program reported success and
the drive appears to be working. The big question is why the warning
about USB drives not appearing, yet my USB 3 not only showed but seemed
to allow the process to complete? Is it safe to securely erase the
other two USB 3 drives this way also? My only guess is that maybe the
program was referring to the slower USB 2/1, but not certain. Although
I had used DBAN on the drives, after recent discussion, I thought secure
erase might be the final step since it doesn't take that much more time,
but I want to make sure that the drives are not going to end up damaged
in some way. Comments welcome.

While the Secure Erase command is executing, the drive is not
allowed to respond to subsequent commands. If it takes three hours
to erase the 500GB drive, during those three hours, the USB converter
chip could lose access to the drive and the drive could "disappear".

Once the Secure Erase is completed, the drive will start responding
again. It's always possible the USB enclosure could need to be
power cycled at that point.

Perhaps that's what they're referring to.

It should have less to do with the flavor of USB 1/2/3 and
more to do with the transport logistics when the drive stops
responding to commands for a time.

Paul

JBI wrote:

After my recent thread on DBAN regarding wiping the three USB 3 drives
before selling them, I decided to try secure erase using the Linux
version of parted magic. I booted up into Linux and parted magic using
the Ultimate Boot CD. I clicked on the erase disc icon on the desktop,
then chose secure erase. Surprisingly, both the internal ATA and
external USB 3 drive showed and there was a warning about USB drives not
being shown due to errors? Anyway, I decided to try a secure erase of
the USB 3 connected drive and I was presented with the option to do an
enhanced secure erase, which I chose. It took about 3 hours for a 500
GB drive, but the end result was that the program reported success and
the drive appears to be working. The big question is why the warning
about USB drives not appearing, yet my USB 3 not only showed but seemed
to allow the process to complete? Is it safe to securely erase the
other two USB 3 drives this way also? My only guess is that maybe the
program was referring to the slower USB 2/1, but not certain. Although
I had used DBAN on the drives, after recent discussion, I thought secure
erase might be the final step since it doesn't take that much more time,
but I want to make sure that the drives are not going to end up damaged
in some way. Comments welcome.

Do you have a card reader? That is connected to an internal USB header
on the motherboard.

Do you have a USB-connected printer that has a USB port?

In the above cases, those card slots or printer port will show as a
drive but there is no media in them, so there's an error trying to
access a drive that is defined but without media.

Some OSes or tools can be used to hide removable drives that are defined
but have no media. However, you are booting using the CD to load an OS
which includes Parted Magic, so it's likely it finds all those "ghost"
drives with no media, reports an error about not showing some, because
as a partition editor there is nothing there for those ghost drives to
work on.

Alas, Parted Magic (https://partedmagic.com/) doesn't provide any
information regarding their error message. The only support are their
forums; however, only customers that paid for the product can register
and use their forum. It's my guess it finds devices that report
themselves as drives but fails to access them because there isn't really
a drive there. No media on which to do any partitioning function. No
media means unmountable.

On 10/01/2018 12:40 PM, Paul wrote:
JBI wrote:
After my recent thread on DBAN regarding wiping the three USB 3 drives
before selling them, I decided to try secure erase using the Linux
version of parted magic.Â* I booted up into Linux and parted magic
using the Ultimate Boot CD.Â* I clicked on the erase disc icon on the
desktop, then chose secure erase.Â* Surprisingly, both the internal ATA
and external USB 3 drive showed and there was a warning about USB
drives not being shown due to errors?Â* Anyway, I decided to try a
secure erase of the USB 3 connected drive and I was presented with the
option to do an enhanced secure erase, which I chose.Â* It took about 3
hours for a 500 GB drive, but the end result was that the program
reported success and the drive appears to be working.Â* The big
question is why the warning about USB drives not appearing, yet my USB
3 not only showed but seemed to allow the process to complete?Â* Is it
safe to securely erase the other two USB 3 drives this way also?Â* My
only guess is that maybe the program was referring to the slower USB
2/1, but not certain.Â* Although I had used DBAN on the drives, after
recent discussion, I thought secure erase might be the final step
since it doesn't take that much more time, but I want to make sure
that the drives are not going to end up damaged in some way.Â* Comments
welcome.

While the Secure Erase command is executing, the drive is not
allowed to respond to subsequent commands. If it takes three hours
to erase the 500GB drive, during those three hours, the USB converter
chip could lose access to the drive and the drive could "disappear".

Once the Secure Erase is completed, the drive will start responding
again. It's always possible the USB enclosure could need to be
power cycled at that point.

Perhaps that's what they're referring to.

So far, so good. I'm on the second 500 GB drive via USB3. Out of
curiosity, what could/would make the converter chip lose access? About
the most I could think of would be a power failure, but I am
compensating for that with battery back up plus UPS.


It should have less to do with the flavor of USB 1/2/3 and
more to do with the transport logistics when the drive stops
responding to commands for a time.

Â*Â* Paul

On 10/1/2018 1:50 PM, JBI wrote:
On 10/01/2018 12:40 PM, Paul wrote:
JBI wrote:
After my recent thread on DBAN regarding wiping the three USB 3
drives before selling them, I decided to try secure erase using the
Linux version of parted magic.Â* I booted up into Linux and parted
magic using the Ultimate Boot CD.Â* I clicked on the erase disc icon
on the desktop, then chose secure erase.Â* Surprisingly, both the
internal ATA and external USB 3 drive showed and there was a warning
about USB drives not being shown due to errors?Â* Anyway, I decided to
try a secure erase of the USB 3 connected drive and I was presented
with the option to do an enhanced secure erase, which I chose.Â* It
took about 3 hours for a 500 GB drive, but the end result was that
the program reported success and the drive appears to be working.
The big question is why the warning about USB drives not appearing,
yet my USB 3 not only showed but seemed to allow the process to
complete?Â* Is it safe to securely erase the other two USB 3 drives
this way also?Â* My only guess is that maybe the program was referring
to the slower USB 2/1, but not certain.Â* Although I had used DBAN on
the drives, after recent discussion, I thought secure erase might be
the final step since it doesn't take that much more time, but I want
to make sure that the drives are not going to end up damaged in some
way.Â* Comments welcome.

While the Secure Erase command is executing, the drive is not
allowed to respond to subsequent commands. If it takes three hours
to erase the 500GB drive, during those three hours, the USB converter
chip could lose access to the drive and the drive could "disappear".

Once the Secure Erase is completed, the drive will start responding
again. It's always possible the USB enclosure could need to be
power cycled at that point.

Perhaps that's what they're referring to.

So far, so good.Â* I'm on the second 500 GB drive via USB3.Â* Out of
curiosity, what could/would make the converter chip lose access?Â* About
the most I could think of would be a power failure, but I am
compensating for that with battery back up plus UPS.


It should have less to do with the flavor of USB 1/2/3 and
more to do with the transport logistics when the drive stops
responding to commands for a time.

Â*Â*Â* Paul

Any of the power saving features that might be built into the
motherboard or provided by the OS that have not been disabled possibly
might trigger and cause problems depending on how long the drive
cleaning takes.

It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find out
why. For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface plugged
into the SATA. On the other, which is a Western Digital, there doesn't
appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems integrated into
the drive. That seems like bad news to me and I'll bet I won't be able
to securely erase it, no?

JBI wrote:
It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find out
why. For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface plugged
into the SATA. On the other, which is a Western Digital, there doesn't
appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems integrated into
the drive. That seems like bad news to me and I'll bet I won't be able
to securely erase it, no?

The "easy" way to engineer such a solution, is to move
the USB to SATA chip onto the main controller board. Then,
remove the SATA connector from the edge of the controller
board. The engineering risk is low, all the same protocols
get used as before. The ATA command set is still present,
the USB interface uses USB Mass Storage, and so on.

If you tried to remove the SATA layer, that's a complete
redesign of the larger controller chip. Which is mostly
a firmware exercise. You'd have to re-write the ATA parser
to make it some kind of "USB Flash like" implementation,
completely cutting the ATA command set out of the picture.
That might cost, say, $2 million in NRE, and with some
schedule risk.

But never discount stupid. Some manager at WDC might believe such
an approach has merit.

I think the whole idea is bad, because of the tail end aspects.
If that drive ever needs data recovery, what tools
exist industry wide for dealing with those "un-shuckable"
drives ? Maybe there's a pin compatible controller
board swap, but that would only work if the implementation
was the one in the first paragraph. A completely custom
controller layer would be a nightmare all-round.

If you examined the controller board and found a USB to SATA
chip on there, that would at least tell you the design is
conventional, and chances are, there's a controller board
swap of some sort that would work to convert it to SATA again.

If Secure Erase doesn't seem to be available for it, it's
back to DBAN you go.

Paul

On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 07:30:17 -0400, JBI wrote:

It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find out
why. For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface plugged
into the SATA.

On the other, which is a Western Digital, there doesn't
appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems integrated into
the drive.

What's the exact model number of the Western Digital product, and what's
the model number of the WD drive that you found inside? I'd like to do
my best to avoid those items.


--

Char Jackson

On 10/02/2018 12:31 PM, Paul wrote:
JBI wrote:
It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find
out why.Â* For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface
plugged into the SATA.Â* On the other, which is a Western Digital,
there doesn't appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems
integrated into the drive.Â* That seems like bad news to me and I'll
bet I won't be able to securely erase it, no?

The "easy" way to engineer such a solution, is to move
the USB to SATA chip onto the main controller board. Then,
remove the SATA connector from the edge of the controller
board. The engineering risk is low, all the same protocols
get used as before. The ATA command set is still present,
the USB interface uses USB Mass Storage, and so on.

If you tried to remove the SATA layer, that's a complete
redesign of the larger controller chip. Which is mostly
a firmware exercise. You'd have to re-write the ATA parser
to make it some kind of "USB Flash like" implementation,
completely cutting the ATA command set out of the picture.
That might cost, say, $2 million in NRE, and with some
schedule risk.

But never discount stupid. Some manager at WDC might believe such
an approach has merit.

I think the whole idea is bad, because of the tail end aspects.
If that drive ever needs data recovery, what tools
exist industry wide for dealing with those "un-shuckable"
drives ? Maybe there's a pin compatible controller
board swap, but that would only work if the implementation
was the one in the first paragraph. A completely custom
controller layer would be a nightmare all-round.

If you examined the controller board and found a USB to SATA
chip on there, that would at least tell you the design is
conventional, and chances are, there's a controller board
swap of some sort that would work to convert it to SATA again.

If Secure Erase doesn't seem to be available for it, it's
back to DBAN you go.

I decided to try a program called BC Total WipeOut. Just a demo, and
the demo writes single pass 0's, but I installed the program on a USB
flash drive and booted up. The options presented included secure erase,
plus resetting of DCO and HPA partitions, all of which I enabled. For
the one drive that wouldn't secure erase, this program seemed to do it,
overwriting everything with single pass 0's according to the log. Took
about 2.5 hours with a 1 TB drive, then another 2.5 hours to verify.


Â*Â* Paul

On 10/02/2018 03:17 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 07:30:17 -0400, JBI wrote:

It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find out
why. For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface plugged
into the SATA.

On the other, which is a Western Digital, there doesn't
appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems integrated into
the drive.

What's the exact model number of the Western Digital product, and what's
the model number of the WD drive that you found inside? I'd like to do
my best to avoid those items.


There's a Youtube on it. Basically, almost all of the WD drives have
integrated USB right into the drive, so there's no separation. If the
controller fails, the drive is worthless. Seagate, Toshiba and others
don't seem to do this as often; I was able to do secure erase on an
external Seagate USB 3 HDD. With the Toshiba, one secure erased;
another did not and, upon opening, its controller was integrated like
the WD.

I guess they're getting cheap and trying to save costs by integrating
controller into the HDD. Bad news if the controller goes down.

On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 16:51:32 -0400, JBI wrote:

On 10/02/2018 03:17 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 07:30:17 -0400, JBI wrote:

It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find out
why. For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface plugged
into the SATA.

On the other, which is a Western Digital, there doesn't
appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems integrated into
the drive.

What's the exact model number of the Western Digital product, and what's
the model number of the WD drive that you found inside? I'd like to do
my best to avoid those items.


There's a Youtube on it. snip

OK, thanks. I was hoping your WD drive had a model name or number on it.

Do you have a link to the Youtube video?


--

Char Jackson

On 10/02/2018 06:23 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 16:51:32 -0400, JBI wrote:

On 10/02/2018 03:17 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 07:30:17 -0400, JBI wrote:

It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find out
why. For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface plugged
into the SATA.

On the other, which is a Western Digital, there doesn't
appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems integrated into
the drive.

What's the exact model number of the Western Digital product, and what's
the model number of the WD drive that you found inside? I'd like to do
my best to avoid those items.


There's a Youtube on it. snip

OK, thanks. I was hoping your WD drive had a model name or number on it.

Do you have a link to the Youtube video?



Here's a link. I didn't view this originally, but it shows a guy trying
to remove one WD drive and plug another into the USB 3 circuitry from
the case... which he quickly discovers that with the WD, this will be
impossible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eFkjx9oWfI

This is what is hampering my efforts to use secure erase with these type
drives. On ones where there is an actual SATA to USB 3 adapter, I can
do it, but not if it's integrated like the one in the video. I'm
waiting to hear back from the software firm that sells the BC Total
WipeOut software. In my tests, it apparently did a total secure erase
on the WD drive in question, and showed it in the log, but I want to
absolutely confirm this with them that it did secure and not just a
standard overwrite with 0's.

On 10/02/2018 06:56 PM, JBI wrote:
On 10/02/2018 06:23 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 16:51:32 -0400, JBI wrote:

On 10/02/2018 03:17 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 07:30:17 -0400, JBI wrote:

It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find
out
why.Â* For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface
plugged
into the SATA.

On the other, which is a Western Digital, there doesn't
appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems integrated
into
the drive.

What's the exact model number of the Western Digital product, and
what's
the model number of the WD drive that you found inside? I'd like to do
my best to avoid those items.


There's a Youtube on it. snip

OK, thanks. I was hoping your WD drive had a model name or number on it.

Do you have a link to the Youtube video?



Here's a link.Â* I didn't view this originally, but it shows a guy trying
to remove one WD drive and plug another into the USB 3 circuitry from
the case... which he quickly discovers that with the WD, this will be
impossible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eFkjx9oWfI

This is what is hampering my efforts to use secure erase with these type
drives.Â* On ones where there is an actual SATA to USB 3 adapter, I can
do it, but not if it's integrated like the one in the video.Â* I'm
waiting to hear back from the software firm that sells the BC Total
WipeOut software.Â* In my tests, it apparently did a total secure erase
on the WD drive in question, and showed it in the log, but I want to
absolutely confirm this with them that it did secure and not just a
standard overwrite with 0's.

I just heard back from Jetico, the firm making BC Total WipeOut. They
confirm that since the log showed no errors and I did in fact specify
secure erase plus HPO/DCO erase/ reset, that all erasures were performed
on the drive as indicated.... good news for difficult drives like the WD
and the fact that it is a USB 3 external HD. The trial has 21 days and
I only have the 1 pass zeroing option, but I will have done at least the
7 pass erases with DBAN first. I think this is about as good as I'm
going to get without either physically destroying the drives and/or
investing $50 in the full version of the BC software.

On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 18:56:15 -0400, JBI wrote:

On 10/02/2018 06:23 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 16:51:32 -0400, JBI wrote:

On 10/02/2018 03:17 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 07:30:17 -0400, JBI wrote:

It has been interesting that just two of the three USB 3 hard drives
would show up in Linux Parted Magic and I disassembled them to find out
why. For the two where Parted Magic allowed secure erase to be
initiated, they appear to be SATA drives with a USB 3 interface plugged
into the SATA.

On the other, which is a Western Digital, there doesn't
appear to be any SATA to USB adapter and the USB 3 seems integrated into
the drive.

What's the exact model number of the Western Digital product, and what's
the model number of the WD drive that you found inside? I'd like to do
my best to avoid those items.


There's a Youtube on it. snip

OK, thanks. I was hoping your WD drive had a model name or number on it.

Do you have a link to the Youtube video?



Here's a link. I didn't view this originally, but it shows a guy trying
to remove one WD drive and plug another into the USB 3 circuitry from
the case... which he quickly discovers that with the WD, this will be
impossible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eFkjx9oWfI

Thanks. The good news is that that's a 2.5" drive, so there's zero
chance that I would be buying that type of product.

--

Char Jackson