erasing faulty hard drive

[kreed]

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

 

[Rheilly Phoull]

On 11/22/2011 4:33 PM, kreed wrote:

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

I guess 4 or 5 turns of heavy cable wrapped around it and then connect
to a welder should corrupt a few areas

Rheilly P

 

[Trevor Wilson]

On 11/22/2011 7:33 PM, kreed wrote:

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

**None of that is likely to do all that much. HDs are pretty well
shielded and quite a bit of energy is required to alter the magnetic
domains from a large distance (2cm).

I know this from some experiments I did some time ago. Out of curiousity.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

 

[Phil Allison]

"kreed"

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.

OTOH - I suspect you have a $129 external drive as sold by Officeworks and
others - so the chances are no-body will even look at it to see if it is
really faulty.



.... Phil

 

[who where]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:33:42 -0800 (PST), kreed
<kenreed1999@gmail.com> wrote:

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

Have you determined that you won't actually invalidate your warranty
claim by that action?

 

[Peter]

Trevor Wilson <trevor@SPAMBLOCKrageaudio.com.au> wrote:

On 11/22/2011 7:33 PM, kreed wrote:
We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

**None of that is likely to do all that much. HDs are pretty well
shielded and quite a bit of energy is required to alter the magnetic
domains from a large distance (2cm).

I know this from some experiments I did some time ago. Out of curiousity.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

No idea if it will work but about 20 seconds in the microwave might do the
job.
Just keep an eye open for any arching or melting as I imagine this would
not be a good look when returning the HD.

I would not want to give my data to anyone.

--

 

[Phil Allison]

"kreed"
"Phil Allison"

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.

OTOH - I suspect you have a $129 external drive as sold by Officeworks and
others - so the chances are no-body will even look at it to see if it is
really faulty.

It was a bare drive we bought, but I have bought officeworks ones, and
some of them are identical. Some of the Officeworks ones have a
caviar black drive in them actually.

You are probably right, no one is likely to bother scanning through
2tb of data, especially when they must get hundreds of them through
their service centre every week.


** HDs are non repairable and at $129 retail it becomes uneconomic to send
to a tech test out.

The transport and handling costs alone would do that.



.... Phil

 

[Trevor Wilson]

On 11/23/2011 12:01 PM, Peter wrote:

Trevor Wilson<trevor@SPAMBLOCKrageaudio.com.au> wrote:
On 11/22/2011 7:33 PM, kreed wrote:
We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

**None of that is likely to do all that much. HDs are pretty well
shielded and quite a bit of energy is required to alter the magnetic
domains from a large distance (2cm).

I know this from some experiments I did some time ago. Out of curiousity.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au


No idea if it will work but about 20 seconds in the microwave might do the
job.

**That, of course, would not only be insane, but ineffective.

Just keep an eye open for any arching or melting as I imagine this would
not be a good look when returning the HD.

**The damage will likely occur inside the magnetron.

I would not want to give my data to anyone.

**Fair enough. Don't use clound computing.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

 

[kreed]

On Nov 23, 10:11 am, "Phil Allison" <phi...@tpg.com.au> wrote:

"kreed"

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc.  It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ?  IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.

OTOH  - I suspect you have a $129 external drive as sold by Officeworks and
others -  so the chances are no-body will even look at it to see if it is
really faulty.

...   Phil

It was a bare drive we bought, but I have bought officeworks ones, and
some of them are identical. Some of the Officeworks ones have a
caviar black drive in them actually.


You are probably right, no one is likely to bother scanning through
2tb of data, especially when they must get hundreds of them through
their service centre every week.

 

[kreed]

On Nov 23, 11:01 am, Peter <some...@microsoft.com> wrote:

Trevor Wilson <tre...@SPAMBLOCKrageaudio.com.au> wrote:
On 11/22/2011 7:33 PM, kreed wrote:
We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc.  It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ?  IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

**None of that is likely to do all that much. HDs are pretty well
shielded and quite a bit of energy is required to alter the magnetic
domains from a large distance (2cm).

I know this from some experiments I did some time ago. Out of curiousity.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

No idea if it will work but about 20 seconds in the microwave might do the
job.
Just keep an eye open for any arching or melting as I imagine this would
not be a good look when returning the HD.

I would not want to give my data to anyone.

--

being metal, I doubt that any of the microwave radiation would make it
to the platters.

 

[terryc]

Peter wrote:

No idea if it will work but about 20 seconds in the microwave might do the
job.

Useless and invalidate any warranty claim (if any damage detectable)

 

[terryc]

Phil Allison wrote:

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.

what files?

 

[Phil Allison]

"terryc"

Phil Allison wrote:

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.

what files?

** FFS you stinking arsehole - write a proper question !!!!!

You think there are no files at all ??

You just wanna know what they are called ??

You never heard of "low level formatting" ??

FOAD cunt head.

 

[keithr]

On 23/11/2011 3:18 PM, Phil Allison wrote:

You think there are no files at all ??

You just wanna know what they are called ??

You never heard of "low level formatting" ??

The LLF contains servo information and record marks, but they are not
files. There are manufacturers files on the disk but they are not the
low level format.

 

[David Eather]

On 22/11/2011 6:33 PM, kreed wrote:

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc. It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ? IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

Dick Smith $99

How much is privacy worth?

 

[Ian Field]

"terryc" <newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote in message
news:jahpar$lug$2@dont-email.me...

Phil Allison wrote:

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.

what files?

Its not files as dingo boy said - its commonly referred to as; "servowrite"
one platter side has servo ident markers to identify track & sector
positions.

If you erase that you effectively 'blind' the head positioner servo, the
onboard micro will decide that whatever's gone wrong is so bad all it can do
is give up and sulk.

 

[terryc]

Ian Field wrote:

"terryc" <newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote in message
news:jahpar$lug$2@dont-email.me...
Phil Allison wrote:

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.
what files?


Its not files as dingo boy said - its commonly referred to as; "servowrite"
one platter side has servo ident markers to identify track & sector
positions.

If you erase that you effectively 'blind' the head positioner servo, the
onboard micro will decide that whatever's gone wrong is so bad all it can do
is give up and sulk.

Well, that makes better sense than files that are auto deleted by every
*nix system on a partition table wipe.

 

[keithr]

On 24/11/2011 9:59 AM, Ian Field wrote:

"terryc"<newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote in message
news:jahpar$lug$2@dont-email.me...
Phil Allison wrote:

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.

what files?


Its not files as dingo boy said - its commonly referred to as; "servowrite"
one platter side has servo ident markers to identify track& sector
positions.

Thats the way it was int the old days. These days, the servo information
is interspersed with the data. Commodity disks only have one platter so
there is nowhere for a dedicated servo surface, and even with enterprise
drives with several platters use th esame system in order to cram a
maximum amount of data on the drive. There are blocks of data that the
manufacturer puts on the drive with things like bad block lists, but
they aren't files in the conventional sense.

If you erase that you effectively 'blind' the head positioner servo, the
onboard micro will decide that whatever's gone wrong is so bad all it can do
is give up and sulk.

If you were to manage to degauss the drive, you might as well have hit
it with a sledgehammer.

 

[Ian Field]

"keithr" <keith@nowhere.com.au> wrote in message
news:4ece08e3@dnews.tpgi.com.au...

On 24/11/2011 9:59 AM, Ian Field wrote:
"terryc"<newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote in message
news:jahpar$lug$2@dont-email.me...
Phil Allison wrote:

** Doing any such thing will likely void the warranty.

Brute force, bulk erasure usually renders a hard drive unusable cos it
remove files put there by the manufacturer.

what files?


Its not files as dingo boy said - its commonly referred to as;
"servowrite"
one platter side has servo ident markers to identify track& sector
positions.

Thats the way it was int the old days. These days, the servo information
is interspersed with the data. Commodity disks only have one platter so
there is nowhere for a dedicated servo surface, and even with enterprise
drives with several platters use th esame system in order to cram a
maximum amount of data on the drive. There are blocks of data that the
manufacturer puts on the drive with things like bad block lists, but they
aren't files in the conventional sense.

If you erase that you effectively 'blind' the head positioner servo, the
onboard micro will decide that whatever's gone wrong is so bad all it can
do
is give up and sulk.

If you were to manage to degauss the drive, you might as well have hit it
with a sledgehammer.

Wonder how much of a whump it takes to degauss the magnets in the DC
brushless motor?

 

[kreed]

On Nov 22, 6:33 pm, kreed <kenreed1...@gmail.com> wrote:

We have a WD 2TB green hard drive that has failed, it will not even be
recognised when connected to the pc.  It will have to go back under
warranty, but is there any way of wiping the data from it first ?  IE
degaussing wand, large magnet etc ?

Seems as though it is working again, but only when laid upside down,
and only when plugged directly to the SATA connector on a PC
motherboard. Will not work in a USB case, but identical ones
(WD20EARS) will. Strange

Am erasing data now while it keeps working before returning it.
Fortunately was nowhere near full.