Faulty Drive

[chalkyman]

I have a DS920+ with 4 8TB drives, and one drive has developed faulty sectors over time so it is being returned.

What is the best way to wipe the drive before returning it for a replacement ?

 

[Jan Janowski]

When I had a Warranty drive from WD a while back... After advance replacment: swapping and repairing the SHR, I took drive to a windows system and erased partitions and created new ones, then, re-formatted it. Done with 'Manage'.. In my case it just barely finished, due to it being a bad drive, lotsa bad blocks, but that was all I could do... in order to satisfy both myself, and get it back for credit at WD...
Eons ago: At work, they would not bother with sending back due to data concerns... It would be drilled through multiple times; spend 24 hours in salt water solution; then into recycling bin for shredding!

 

[Telos]

What is the best way to wipe the drive before returning it for a replacement

Formatting does nothing.

If you have a WinPC. Use "diskpart clean all". For a Mac/Linux PC, use "dd" to write zeroes across the entire surface.

 

[Robbie]

MacOS has accredited secure wipe software baked into the regular OS and at a level that meets regulated government standards.

That said, our classified drives went in the shredder and the remains went to the incinerator. Nuke it from orbit (its the only way to be sure) still hasn't been cleared for general use yet.

 

[Jan Janowski]

my apologies.... I was told by another that erasing all partitions, followed by creating 1 new partition, then reformat was good...