Prepping HDDs for sale

kosymodo

kosymodo

kosymodo

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18 Jun 2020
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354
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Warminster
Hi folks, I'm after some advice in terms of prepping HDDs for sale. I have a number of drives which I've upgraded from my NAS. They're currently piled up in my office, as I'm unsure how to go about prepping them for resale. When I had a tower PC, I'd just add the drive to the tower and erase it. However, these days I only have a laptop (well, a few laptops actually!) I do have an external SATA hard drive docking station, which connects via USB-A, but on the one occasion in the past when I connected this up, it seemed to take ages to do anything with the drive. What do I need to buy in order to get a proper high speed connection between the drive and laptop? I've no need for anyting other than a mechanism for erasing these 3.5" drives. I can use either a Windows laptop or my MacBook Pro, I don't have a preference. Thanks!
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
Doesn't the nas allow secure erase of drives
Before removing them?

I still have an old blacx external docking station
Connects fine over usb 3
For the rare occasion I need to use a hdd
For ssds I have a usb to sata cable
No need for external power

You could try a live bootable usb
See if that has more success connecting to
The docking station
For secure erase,hdd,ssd,m2 my favourite live usb
Would be parted magic
The free version is still around if you look for it
Though it's not expensive for paid version
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply!

To be honest, I'm not sure if my NAS has that function. However, it's irrelevant to a point, as the drives are now out of the NAS. To put a drive back in would mean pulling a working drive, which isn't what I want to do.

Will look into Parted Magic!
 
blueacid said:
Check whether the drives support the ATA Secure Erase feature: https://www.pcworld.com/article/461014/how-to-securely-erase-your-hard-drive.html

You can probably issue the command via the existing, slow dock. I'd think that's likely to do the job!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply!

Will look into this...to be fair I should have mentioned in my OP that I'm also looking to health check the drives too, as one of the reasons I upgraded some of the drives was down to error messages from my NAS. Problem is, I can't remember which of the drives might have been faulty. Have seen people using CrystalDiskInfo to prove to buyers that the drive is OK. So I'd be looking to run something like this, as well as erasing the data.
 
darael said:
With older hard drives this won't matter so much, but is the docking station USB 2.0 or 3.0? A USB 3.0 dock can make all the difference with newer hard drives that can write up to speeds of ~200MB/sec.

I like to use HD Tune to run a few erase cycles across the drive's entire surface. Parted Magic would do the job, but your laptop would be tied up in Parted Magic if you booted into it. Something else to try would be running Parted Magic from a virtual machine and attaching the USB dock to the VM while it erases.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply!

Bound to be USB 2.0 as it's more than a few years old :(
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
Should do the job
Though doesn't also do 2.5 drives
By the look of it
And no idea how easy to put drives in
And out
I prefer mine where they just push in
From above
Click to expand...
I only have 3.5" drives, so that's OK :)

The push in from above is what I have, but only USB 2.0 by the looks of it

How about this one - can't see any comparable product on OC
 
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