DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) Question

[hey_now]

Hi guys and gals;

First time poster, long time reader of the forum. I've always been able to search and find answers to any questions, so thank you very much for that. I'm very grateful to all the folks who contribute to this wonderful forum.

For this question I wasn't able to find any previous answer, and am hoping someone can assist.

My question:

I am attempting to use DBAN off of a bootable DVD to sanitize my hard drive. The problem is, it is not seeing my drive. I tested a USB key, and it is able to see it and sanitize it just fine so I know the ISO file I burned is working. My drive is a Seagate 500GB 7200.11 (one of those drives - ugh!) connected to an Asus P5Q mobo. I have no Raid or anything fancy setup. Just that one drive connected, and DBAN can't see it.

Has anyone ever encountered this scenario before or have any ideas as to what I can do to get DBAN to see this drive?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

 

[Reliom]

Hi guys and gals;

First time poster, long time reader of the forum. I've always been able to search and find answers to any questions, so thank you very much for that. I'm very grateful to all the folks who contribute to this wonderful forum.

For this question I wasn't able to find any previous answer, and am hoping someone can assist.

My question:

I am attempting to use DBAN off of a bootable DVD to sanitize my hard drive. The problem is, it is not seeing my drive. I tested a USB key, and it is able to see it and sanitize it just fine so I know the ISO file I burned is working. My drive is a Seagate 500GB 7200.11 (one of those drives - ugh!) connected to an Asus P5Q mobo. I have no Raid or anything fancy setup. Just that one drive connected, and DBAN can't see it.

Has anyone ever encountered this scenario before or have any ideas as to what I can do to get DBAN to see this drive?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

DBAN sucks user MHDD

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.02.10-Magic-Boot-Disk/

It's a faster and more secure wipe its also capable of detecting drives easier....

1. Burn the ISO
2. Start it up
3. Type MHDD and hit <enter> at the command prompt
4. It should list your drives select the number of the one you want to erase and hit <enter>
5. Type erase and hit <enter> it will ask you for your starting sector... leave it at <0> and your ending sector leave that at the default as well.

This application kicks serious ass it can be used for other things then erasing the drive read the manual

Edit: Pretty sure the erase commands locks the drive so you need to let it run completely through or you will end up with a locked drive.

 

[hey_now]

Thanks for the tip, Reliom!!

In researching why DBAN could not pick up my drive, I stumbled onto another tool that was recommended by a guy on an Ubuntu forum. He basically said the same thing as you, that DBAN doesn't wipe as well as thought. He recommend a program called HD Erase. I downloaded it and will be using it. It apparently adheres to many pieces of US Government legislation like Sarbanes Oxley, and another piece of health care legislation related to destroying patient records and data.

Once I'm finished with all this, I will update this thread so that anyone else having the same issue as I will know what to do.

 

[Reliom]

Thanks for the tip, Reliom!!

In researching why DBAN could not pick up my drive, I stumbled onto another tool that was recommended by a guy on an Ubuntu forum. He basically said the same thing as you, that DBAN doesn't wipe as well as thought. He recommend a program called HD Erase. I downloaded it and will be using it. It apparently adheres to many pieces of US Government legislation like Sarbanes Oxley, and another piece of health care legislation related to destroying patient records and data.

Once I'm finished with all this, I will update this thread so that anyone else having the same issue as I will know what to do.

Pretty sure that is the same as the one included in MHDD but MHDD does a lot more as I said its a really cool tool.

Edit:
http://real-world-systems.com/docs/MHDD_en_manual.html#erase

 

[Reliom]

Thinking back on it I am pretty sure I tried HDDerase and it was a pain in the ass by itself but using the MHDD integrated version was quick and simple well fairly in comparison but then again I haven't tried the standalone HDDerase in a long time.

 

[hey_now]

Reliom, I looked at the link you provided and I noticed that it was the same as well. I had some trouble using HDDErase, so I will give MHDD a shot.

 

[Reliom]

Reliom, I looked at the link you provided and I noticed that it was the same as well. I had some trouble using HDDErase, so I will give MHDD a shot.

After looking at them some more I starting to think they are completely different programs but invoke the same firmware commands.. not sure if one or the other is better because it does multiple runs or something like that but if someone else on here knows would be nice if they could enlighten everyone

 

[hey_now]

I will go ahead and update/put this thread to rest.

After taking out the drive and hooking it up via USB, DBAN was finally able to see it. After about half an hour of running the wipe, DBAN errored out. After researching, it appears that it wasn't meant to wipe hard drives with bad sectors, which is the problem with my drive, hence why I want to wipe it before returning it to Segate for RMA. So next, I moved onto Active Kill Disk free edition. This does a one pass zero wipe of the drive. This one worked successfully without issue. It took about 24 hours to wipe the drive. For fun, I decided to try using Secure Erase to wipe it again as I heard that it was superior to other tools at wiping drives due to its ability to make use of the erase command built into hard drives. After trying both version 3.1 and 4.0, it would not work. It would always hang after the screen where I accept the license agreement and before I am supposed to choose my hard drive. My guess was that it was unable to see my drive. After doing more research, it appears that Secure Erase is not compatible with some Mobos. I tested it on a 10 year old P3 I have and it was able to see the drive, so I know my media was OK.

Anyway, I was happy with the one pass that Kill Disk performed. I've packed the drive up and sent it back to Seagate. Case closed for now. Though I have a feeling I may be doing this whole song and dance again next year. The new drive is making the same tinny sound as the old one when it was first new. This noise eventually progressed into the click of death, and the ensuing bad sectors. I did test the new drive with SeaTools and it passed with flying colors. No errors were recorded during the short and long test, so I can't send that back. Have to wait for it to take a dump. Gotta love Seagate quality, lol.

 

[gogfly]

try WBD(Wipe Bad Disk)