Hi Everyone,

Does anyone know what program would be able to wipe multiple hard drives at the same time? I need to wipe a bunch of hard drives on a pretty continuous basis and doing one after another is going to be pretty slow.

I have seen a few things on DBAN that make me think it may be able to do this with autonuke but even if that is the case I have read that DBAN is much slower than HDDErase.

I'm making a computer specifically for this so if there is any special controller or raid device I need please let me know.

Thanks,

I would personally look at disk enclosures (ebay?) for SATA/SAS or SCSI drives and a decent quality HBA, it all depends on the volumes you need/want to handle, never personally had an issue with dban...

Wonder what ever happened to eban..?

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Secarma Ltd
http://www.secarma.co.uk

Hi and thanks for he replies.

I'm trying to hook multiple SATA drives up to a single mini and wipe them as well as test them from dos.

What about a desktop pc with extra sata & pata cards fitted & then run multiple instances of secure erase?
Just a thought?

Loki

I didnt know I could run multiple instances of it w/o having some other kind of program.

Also secure erase is the same thing as HDDerase right?

Secure erase is the command. HDDerase just uses it.

I have done it many times 4 Sata in 1 PC using DBAN boot CD I just type quick and walk away. Sure its not as fast as other methods but it does the job leave it and forget it

BCorp,

We use MultiWipe, a software developed in-house (available at http://www.multiwipe.com/). You can wipe multiple drives simultaneously (the model is shown to help differentiate) and if connected directly to motherboard or through eSata, it shows the serial number of each drive. Our support is pretty good (well-tested across all OS's, and if any bugs arise we work on fixing them as soon as possible). Let me know if you or anyone else is interested.

Regards,

Dizi

How about (in Windows):
Open X command prompts where X is the number of drives attached and ready to be wiped.
At each command prompt...
diskpart
select disk # (where # is one of the disks)
clean all
---
I did this to clean all the drives in a RAID array I was building.
The "clean all" command will write 0s to every sector of the disk, and uses no cpu doing so, so running a bunch of them at a time is not a problem.

Thats good to know.
I knew that during install of Win7 a full format (not quick format) did the same.

Actually a full format only writes to the sectors of a partition, and even if the partition takes up the entire drive it really does not, as sector 0 plus some amount of sectors following will typically not be assigned to the partition. Also, depending on various factors (drive type, partition type, etc, etc), there could be sectors after a single drive-encompassing partition that are not assigned to the partition as well. Don't ever think that a full format of a single drive-encompasing partition will clean your drive completely. No "standard" format will do that. Only a DISKPART "clean all" (or similar operation like Erase Disk in Acronis) will write to every sector of the hard drive from 0 to N, where N is the last sector. Even then there will still be areas such as the HPA that will remain unchanged, hidden away from normal access except by means of extrodinary tools and/or vendor utilities. Those, however, are usually not of concern to someone trying to clean the "user" area of their drive.

For wiping drives, if you have access to Linux you can just use the shred command.

Update:

Diskpart & the clean all command works great.
My laptop has 6 usb ports so multiple drives is fine via caddies just run multiple diskpart screens.

Took 1h 25mins to secure wipe a laptop 120Gb drive & the cpu usage is low so no worries there.


loki.

FYI If you like to see the progress of your wipe (which you cannot via diskpart+clean), you can alternatively run multiple instances of HDDScan in Erase mode; this also has the added bonus of getting performance numbers as well as feedback on sectors that might cause problems.

Exactly what I was going to say.


I also like how HDDSCAN numbers the sectors with its fill, it also helps when performing DR because you can quite clearly see where the un-imaged sectors are.

Update:

If your running win7 & have Computer open when you run diskpart clean all command you will see a green bar go accross the top of the Computer screen so you can check your status that way.

Loki

Nice!
Thanks for sharing that.

I have used Darik's Boot and Nuke (dban) to wipe several drives at a time. The website indicates that they have run it on a computer with 100 SCSI hard drives.

TonyC

I recommend this tool.......we use it in our lab as it's fast and you can customize the wiping pattern with specific text, etc

http://www.datarecoveryengineer.com/hard-disk-wiper/

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Data Recovery Ireland

Nobody mention "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx &" ?

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Lemmy