Selling My RAID0 Setup…

slipd

slipd

slipd

Soldato
Joined
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Hampshire, England.
Hey guys,

Seeing as though I’ve now got 2x 320GB Seagate’s on board, I now have no need for my aging 2x 160GB Samsung Spinpoint combo, so I’ll be putting them up for sale on a well know auction website :D

The thing is, the drives were used in RAID0 and although they’ve been formatted prior to auction, I still want to be sure that no one can do a drive restore upon receipt of them?

Are there any free apps out there that can assure that the drive/s will be as ‘clear’ as it/they can be?

That said, if I was to sell them separately then they would be able to restore them anyway would they? The drives have only ever been used in RAID0…

Suggestions please :)

Cheers,

SW.
 
There's also the demo version of system mechanic 5 or 6.
Install the drive scrubber app and you can overwrite all the data on the hard drive with 1s and0s as many times as you like.
 
jbloggs said:
sam.wheale:

If you run PowerMax it will do what you require. Although it is a utility released by Maxtor it apparently runs on any make of HDD. :)
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I don't think this will work because doesn't it require you to be in Windows? I don't think it would support my nVidia 3 RAID controler either...

If I were to format them each individually, as if preparing for a fresh XP install, I could install the RAID controller and then do a full format, and seeing as though I'll be selling the drives sepparately, any data recovery would be very unlikely wouldn't it?

SW.
 
sam.wheale said:
If I were to format them each individually, as if preparing for a fresh XP install, I could install the RAID controller and then do a full format, and seeing as though I'll be selling the drives sepparately, any data recovery would be very unlikely wouldn't it?
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A Format is not enough, you need to use a program that overwrites all the data on the drive with '0' and '1'
 
Dutch Guy said:
A Format is not enough, you need to use a program that overwrites all the data on the drive with '0' and '1'
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While I agree the data is feasably able to be restored after a format ( or two) is it likely they will be using the same RAID controller and go through the bother of trying to restore- or whatever the correct terminology is- ( after a format)

This is an ageing set - so the controller / mobo is also likely to be quite old and therefore odds are pretty remote any resotrationg would work (imho)

Personally I would say a couple of full formats ( not quick ones) should do the trick ( and I would suggest indiididually also, even more reason to think RAID would then be unrecoverable
 
FrankJH said:
even more reason to think RAID would then be unrecoverable
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As these are RAID drives the only way to recover the data is if someone would have both drives and a compatible RAID controller so the chance is very small in this case.

But for everyone else selling a single harddrive, a Format does not erase the data on the drive, it only deletes the "index"
 
As these are RAID drives the only way to recover the data is if someone would have both drives and a compatible RAID controller
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Depends on what kind of data they have stored, if there dealing with word documents/invoices/small personal files, you will probably find that, depending on stripe size, that quite a lot of data is recoverable still.

I.e a stripe size of 64/128kb, still allows recovery of most small document files and some personal data in most cases, due to the fact that the majority/all of the file will reside on the harddrive. Its also worth noting that in the majority of cases these are the kind of files you would probably wish to protect the most.
 
Dutch Guy said:
As these are RAID drives the only way to recover the data is if someone would have both drives and a compatible RAID controller so the chance is very small in this case.

But for everyone else selling a single harddrive, a Format does not erase the data on the drive, it only deletes the "index"
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yeah thanks Dutch Guy - exactly what I was meaning
 
save yourself some hassle.

list them seperately, if the same buyer gets them THEN mess around trying to fix it.

your at no risk if the drives go to different people, unless they get together....... :P
 
your at no risk if the drives go to different people, unless they get together.
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Thats simply not true. Lets say you raided the drives and had a stripe size of 128K. Then the first 128Kilobytes of a file could be completely recoverable, depending on the location of the harddrive on the controller (first 128k or second 128k). If you had a look at your TXT/Doc files, this would mean that a vast majority of information is still available.

Of course if the drive was just full with useless information then yeah it doesnt matter, but if it has personal details that you would not want anybody to get there hands on, then you should look at a decent diskwiping software (a few already mentioned above)
 
Toytown said:
Thats simply not true. Lets say you raided the drives and had a stripe size of 128K. Then the first 128Kilobytes of a file could be completely recoverable, depending on the location of the harddrive on the controller (first 128k or second 128k). If you had a look at your TXT/Doc files, this would mean that a vast majority of information is still available.

Of course if the drive was just full with useless information then yeah it doesnt matter, but if it has personal details that you would not want anybody to get there hands on, then you should look at a decent diskwiping software (a few already mentioned above)
Click to expand...

Of course IF they had the same raid controller (and magically set up the same stripe size) and then actually bothered to try and recover after the format anyway..............

with each "combination" of events its getting less and less likely
 
sam.wheale said:
I don't think this will work because doesn't it require you to be in Windows? I don't think it would support my nVidia 3 RAID controler either...

If I were to format them each individually, as if preparing for a fresh XP install, I could install the RAID controller and then do a full format, and seeing as though I'll be selling the drives sepparately, any data recovery would be very unlikely wouldn't it?

SW.
Click to expand...

This program runs in its own environment...booting from a floppy. Just download it stick a floppy in and click on create disk in the folder you have downloaded. Turn off your Unplug any other hard drive you have in your pc accept the 2 you want to format. Leave this 2 drives plugged in reboot with from the floppy and it will find the 2 sata drives installed. Once it’s found them click on full format go over each drive at least twice. It will read the SATA drives installed I’ve used it a few times myself with 2 160 GB Maxtor Diamondmax 9 SATA drives.
 
Thanks for the comments people!

Interesting...

Probably going to format them a couple of times, individually, and then flog them separately :p

A long time apart ;)

To different buyers :)

Cheers,

SW.
 
If you really have sensitive data on the drive why not try one of the suggestions in this thread like Killdisk, Darik's Boot and Nuke or Powermax :confused:

You can just connect them as single drives and nuke the data on each drive separately by letting the apps overwrite all data on the drive with zero's and ones, it takes some tiime but it is the only way to really get rid of the data.

If they want to read the data after that the only way is to take the drive apart by specialist with a small chance of recovery.
 
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