22 August 2005

HDD crash - Final

The crashed external WD USB HDD should be in transit back to Western Digital now. The new one is working fine, and I hope it doesn't crash soon!

Before packaging the bad HDD for return I wiped it clean to remove all data. Wiping process was:

  • Write zeros on the whole disk: ~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
  • Write random characters: ~$ dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdb
  • Again write zeros on the whole disk: ~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb

Later I realized that I could have also used shred, or after writing zeros I could have written some porn for WD as a gift ;). Maybe I will do that next time for them.

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