Securely deleting drive content

[sbc_memory]

   

Hi all,

I just bought a TeraStation with a larger capacity and want to sell my used one, but I'm concerned about personal data on the hard drives. I have a program I normally use on individual drives to scrub drives before I sell them, but this program deletes all data on the drive. I don't want to do that to this TeraStation because I want to leave the operating system intact. My question is - how does the RAID controller work?

 

As we know, simply deleting a file from the file allocation table (or its equivalent) doesn't remove the data from the surface of the disk. If I were to remove a drive and scrub it, then put it back in... would the RAID controller rebuild everything bit by bit including those "deleted" files? Or would it only restore the files listed as good in the FAT?

 

If it only restores the files referenced in the FAT then I could remove each drive one by one and scrub them, then put them back in and let the RAID controller rebuild. But if they rebuild *everything* then I would like to know how to securely delete the data.

[Jason]

Not sure which model TS this is. But on certain ones it has a disk erase function. This takes a few days and will completely scrub the drives. This is located under the disk management tab.

[sbc_memory]

   I have the plain silver TeraStation.  I looked under the management tab and if has a Format option, but not a scrub option.

Message Edited by sbc_memory on 03-12-2009 05:53 PM

[Colin137]

If that software can scrub a particular partition, pull the drives out, then run the program on the largest partition.

[sbc_memory]

   

Finally got a chance to get around to this.  I attached one of the drives to my PC and it sees 4 partitions on this 160GB drive:

 

376MB

133MB

148GB

173MB

 

I highlighted the one to show that it was in GB, not MB.  So I should be okay to scrub that partition.  But what are the other 3 partitions? I figure one is for the TS's OS, but what are the other two?

[Colin137]

I'm not completely sure, but I know one is a swap partition.

[sbc_memory]

   I appreciate the help so far Colin.  Are you an employee of Buffalo?  If so, is there someone you can contact to get more info?  Or ask them to come post a reply here?

[Dustrega]

All of the current moderators are tech support representatives of Buffalo :)

[Colin137]

It may take me a day or two, but I'll find that out for you.

[sbc_memory]

   Ok, just checking.  Thanks :)

[Colin137]

So the partition layout on each disk is this:

 

1. OS partition

2. Swap partition

3. Data partition

4. small buffer partition

[sbc_memory]

   So I can scrub the last three partitions without affecting the ability to use the TS, correct?

[Dustrega]

No, you'll want to only scrub the largest partition as the other parts rely on each other to allow the firmware to work. :)

[sbc_memory]

   Ok, how about this then.  What if I put the drives back into the TS and boot it up and THEN run the scrubbing software?  That way the program will run its multiple passes - I'm assuming the TS's OS would use the other partitions in the writing process, theyreby scrubbing those as well?

[Colin137]

It would only touch the data partition, but since SMB is a file-level instead of block-level storage protocol, the scrubbing software would not have the desired effect.