Wiping multiple hard disks at once, is there such a device that exists?

spikey57

spikey57

spikey57

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I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate sub-forum for this sort of thing. But anyway, straight to the point.

As part of the Data Protection Act, I have to wipe the hard disks of any pc's that leave the premisis using DBAN software (some of you may have heard of it).

Is there a bit of hardware out there that allows you to connect up loads and loads of hard disk drives at once to allow me to wipe them all at once.

As some pc's have hardware issues, we have to take the drives out and wipe them using another functioning pc.

Any suggestions would be nice.

Spikey57
 
yes, that would do it, however we have no space in the work area to do this...Health and Safety blah blah blah... we need to be able to wipe both sata and ide style hard disks.
 
Access to linux? Could connect half a dozen drives and run half a dozen instances of shred, the destructive version of badblocks, or a custom effort based around dd if=/dev/zero and dd if=/dev/random

If it has to be windows then ill leave someone else to advise, as for things like this I see using windows as handicapping yourself off the start :)
 
well what we do is we choose the pc to boot from cd, with the DBAN program on a cd. it runs and can pick up multiple hard disks. This is done outside any operating system.

All we require is a way to connect up multiple hard disks via either a sata expansion card or an ide expansion card.

My thoughts were to connect a nas type caddy via usb (unless you can get them to connect using a sata port) and then shred the hard disks that way. Something that would be cheap to do.
 
oh right, if youre stuck using dban..
stick a four port raid card in the computer, and a two port ide card too if need be. they cost about 15 quid each, then connect many drives to it as if they were internal drives, just have them sat on the desk. can probably fit a card in each expansion slot youve got as logn as dban can cope

more expensive would be a nas with quick swap bays, tidier but slower and costlier. shreding over usb or even over gigabit ethernet will be slow.
 
hat sounds like the route to go, and the cheapest way of doing it. So far Dban has managed to wipe 3 disks at the same time, 3 80gb hard disks So i can't see why it wouldn't be able to cope. The largest disks we have are 80gb, most of them are standard 40GB hard disks, the smallest we have is 10gb in the really really old machines.

Thank you for the quick replies. On a side note do you know of any external power supplies that would be able to provide power to said hard disks? As most of the pc's we have are supplied with the basic psu's that have the minimum connections for the components.

Spikey57
 
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I've been to a place where they have dozens of hot swap racks connected up to wipe drives at one go. It's strangely impressive!

PK!
 
We have a similar set up at work, except all the pc's have base builds on for emergency swap outs for hardware and software failures.

Ideally we would have one set up for wiping hard disks but we don't have the room in our build room.
 
We have a similar need where I work.
We have a couple of machines stuffed with 4 port sata cards, works a treat :D
 
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