Ah, indeed. Though when working as designed, the ATA Secure Erase *should* reach all storage. Except when it doesn't. Hmm.
In your experience, what are the ATA Secure Erase failure modes? If we (pessimistically) assume that it can fail silently, it is probably often working as intended (unless it throws an error).
So if I had to write an internal standard at $dayjob, the wiping workflow would *always* attempt an ATA Secure Erase first, and then *always* follow with a single overwrite (with zeroes or NULL; the reasons for overlapping / random / multipass are from ancient HDD days).
Royce Williams
npub1d9…v7m3z
2025-12-30 03:19:08 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…q2np
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npub1d9j86kugzarj4skw6juglk2de6mful9svqu8yac6vum5wz5xtcwsyv7m3zSeen on
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"content": "Ah, indeed. Though when working as designed, the ATA Secure Erase *should* reach all storage. Except when it doesn't. Hmm.\n\nIn your experience, what are the ATA Secure Erase failure modes? If we (pessimistically) assume that it can fail silently, it is probably often working as intended (unless it throws an error).\n\nSo if I had to write an internal standard at $dayjob, the wiping workflow would *always* attempt an ATA Secure Erase first, and then *always* follow with a single overwrite (with zeroes or NULL; the reasons for overlapping / random / multipass are from ancient HDD days).",
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