How to wipe 10 hard drives clean at a time?

[Bad Dude]

Hey guys,
My friend's company just gave me about 20 hard drives and more to come, but I need to wipe it clean and not just a simple format. I could put these SATA drives into a storage tower that I can wipe 10 drives at a time on a RAID controller card.
What's the best and quickest way to secure erase the drives? I want to do all 10 at a time. I am can't seem to find a definitive answers to some of the software that I ran into. I looked into DBAN, Active KillDisk Pro, MiniTool DriveWipe, Secure Erase, and GParted. I just need some good detail instructions to perform the erase.

Thanks for any help.

 

[lambchops511]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M

 

[Bad Dude]

Thanks for the command but which software do I use it with? Any Linux version on Live CD?
Thanks.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M

 

[lambchops511]

Thanks for the command but which software do I use it with? Any Linux version on Live CD?
Thanks.

Yes. Any *nix should have dd.

And only if all women had DD too.

 

[alan1476]

Parted Magic is the only tool I use in my shop for doing a secure erase on an SSD, once loaded the tool only takes about 5 seconds. And you can go right down the line and erase as many as you have installed in one machine.

 

[corkyg]

RTP! "My friend's company just gave me about 20 hard drives and more to come"

There is nothing in the thread that asks about SSDs. It is all about HDDs, even in the title.

 

[BrightCandle]

I second the dd approach, its free, simple and fast. Just plug in all the disks, give each its own console and let it run. No need to do anything fancy.

 

[imagoon]

DBAN has a disk on the site that does a Mil spec wipe to any and all drives it sees on a system. I used to use it at work to clear drives using in finance servers / desktops / laptops. Plugged them in 12 at a time on a box I had without a cover and a couple of SATA cards and boot the CD, come back in a couple of hours. Add more systems / SATA cards as needed for the number of drives.

 

[Bad Dude]

For each drive, you have to bring up it's own console? So each drive I have to bring up individual console?
Thanks.

I second the dd approach, its free, simple and fast. Just plug in all the disks, give each its own console and let it run. No need to do anything fancy.

 

[Elixer]

For each drive, you have to bring up it's own console? So each drive I have to bring up individual console?
Thanks.

You can use one console if you want...
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M &
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=1M &
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=1M &

and so on. It just can get a bit confusing to see when one is done if you do it this way.
That is why it is better to open a console, and open X tabs on that console for each drive.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

Just be careful with dd and be sure NOT to run this dd on a hard drive you do NOT want to wipe. I recommend disconnecting all HDDs you want to preserve from the computer you're using to wipe these HDDs as an extra precaution.

 

[Bad Dude]

So which part of the code specify which drive to wipe?
Thanks.

You can use one console if you want...
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M &
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=1M &
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=1M &

and so on. It just can get a bit confusing to see when one is done if you do it this way.
That is why it is better to open a console, and open X tabs on that console for each drive.

 

[imagoon]

Look at DBAN... It really is easier and does them all at the same time.

Free, bootable CD, disconnect what you don't want wiped and boot.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Wouldn't "hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sdX" work for spinning platter drives as well?

 

[KillerBee]

this one is a lil better than dd
"dcfldd" continuously outputs how much has been written

https://www.anti-forensics.com/disk-wiping-with-dcfldd/

You can even write your own message with textpattern
but it will slow it down