A while back i was running 2 74gb raptors in raid 0, (spec in sig) i started to get errors on boot, saying a drive has failed, i was fit to boot into windows fine with the array for months (think it was my overclock caused the erro messages) I subsequently switched to a single drive, my 2 raptors were never formatted, my question is, can i take these 2 drives, put them back in my rig, set bios to raid and then delete the array and all data on the 2 drives so that i can sell them on. Thanks for advice.
Deleting a raid 0 array
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Probably. Fairly good odds at least. If you don't need the data on them then you don't need to set the raid up to delete the data though.
There's a few programs available, the general theme is they write zeros and/or pseudo-random mess all over the drive. I use dd, which is as old as anything and very, very simple. Therefore rather reliable. It sequentially writes a specified input to every block on the disk, don't suppose you have a linux install somewhere? On the offchance that you do, I personally leave this running overnight
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=4k conv=sync,noerror && \
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx conv=sync,noerror && \
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=32k conv=sync,noerror && halt
at the end of which the disk has nothing but zeros on it, and quite persistent attempts to recover data beyond this will uncover a complete mess. It's probably possible to overwrite the entire drive with copies a text file containing "you'll never get my data" if you're so inclined. No good reason for this level of paranoia, I don't care that much if the new owner of my drive uncovers stacks of iso files and cad work. Just possibly there's bank details on it somewhere though, and I feel better for the process.
That said, getting data off one half of a raid 0 is almost an art form in itself and rather difficult anyway.
There's a few programs available, the general theme is they write zeros and/or pseudo-random mess all over the drive. I use dd, which is as old as anything and very, very simple. Therefore rather reliable. It sequentially writes a specified input to every block on the disk, don't suppose you have a linux install somewhere? On the offchance that you do, I personally leave this running overnight
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=4k conv=sync,noerror && \
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx conv=sync,noerror && \
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=32k conv=sync,noerror && halt
at the end of which the disk has nothing but zeros on it, and quite persistent attempts to recover data beyond this will uncover a complete mess. It's probably possible to overwrite the entire drive with copies a text file containing "you'll never get my data" if you're so inclined. No good reason for this level of paranoia, I don't care that much if the new owner of my drive uncovers stacks of iso files and cad work. Just possibly there's bank details on it somewhere though, and I feel better for the process.
That said, getting data off one half of a raid 0 is almost an art form in itself and rather difficult anyway.
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Cheers jon, tbh theres nothing of real importance on the 2 drives (well unless your a music fan) i only ran them for a few weeks to try raid0, the noise of them got on my nerves, i simply switched my bios to ide and bunged in a samsung f1 320gb and used it as my main drive, much quieter, ill stick the 2 raptors back in and delete the array and get shot of them, theyll help to fund my wee i7 project.