Wiping two kinds of dying hard-drives?

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AutomaticCoding

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Dec 5, 2012
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Okay, I'm about to RMA two types of dying hard-drives (One seagate, one Western Digital) and I want to make sure all my personal data is off it.

Problems with them both (Reasons why I'm RMAing them) make it hard to wipe the data, one of them has loads of bad sectors (/reallocated) and corrupts data extremely quickly, and, I can't seem to find a drive wiper that supports wiping (or further corrupting) bad sectors, I heard that spinrite supports testing them, but, not wiping them. The second drive likes to random stop responding and the only way to get it working again is to powercycle the drive (or, in my case, the whole PC). Are there any tools out there that both support:-

A. Wiping drives with bad sectors

and

B. Wiping drives that when they go off, power cycle the drive and continue from where you were?

Thanks.
 
Solution
F
Make an ultimate boot disc.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/index.html

But you will need an ISO burner and a blank CD
http://www.freeisoburner.com/

Put the ultimate boot disc you just made into your cd drive and reset your machine.

You will now boot into the ultimate boot disc.

There are several disc wipers on this utility disc, but if you want to keep it simple use the option near the bottom called "Parted Magic". And when you launch it don't worry it is only installing to your computers memory and will be gone next computer reset.

Once inside Parted Magic, go to the start menu at the bottom left corner and you should see a program list, one of those should be named hard drive wiping or close. Now open that and you can write...
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clutchc

clutchc

Titan
Ambassador
Apr 22, 2009
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If you do have to send in your drives with possible data still readable on them...
I had the same situation with a Hitachi drive. The Hitachi rep told me that they have this occur frequently; folks sending in drives with data on them. He assured me the first thing they do is destroy the data on the drives if they can't repair it and return the drive to the original customer. I was able to finally wipe my Hiatchi 2GB before it was sent in, but i'm not sure it wiped corrupt sectors. Hitachi sent me a new drive.
 
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fixer762

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Jan 31, 2013
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Make an ultimate boot disc.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/index.html

But you will need an ISO burner and a blank CD
http://www.freeisoburner.com/

Put the ultimate boot disc you just made into your cd drive and reset your machine.

You will now boot into the ultimate boot disc.

There are several disc wipers on this utility disc, but if you want to keep it simple use the option near the bottom called "Parted Magic". And when you launch it don't worry it is only installing to your computers memory and will be gone next computer reset.

Once inside Parted Magic, go to the start menu at the bottom left corner and you should see a program list, one of those should be named hard drive wiping or close. Now open that and you can write zeros all across the disc in about 2-3hours.

If you want to get technical you could use the other programs on the ultimate boot disc, but those take like 7-8 hours or even days to wipe a disc.

And if you like your ultimate boot disc make one for each of your friends. It is a really useful tool to have around and I think everyone should have one or something like it.
 
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