Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 20 Apr 2003 12:51:54 +0200 | Subject | Re: Are linux-fs's drive-fault-tolerant by concept? | From | Helge Hafting <> |
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On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 05:15:31PM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote: > On Sat, 19 Apr 2003 22:56:21 +0200, Helge Hafting said: > > > There are commercially available programs that guarantees to > > wipe your drive clean - including hidden areas and remapped > > sectors. You should then be able to send drives > > back for warranty replacement. > > These don't address the problem - if the drive won't go "ready" because > of a blown server platter, your data won't get overwritten but it's still > readable (a number of companies make good money at this). > I see. Your data is so special that you expect people to pay for reconstruction hoping to find something that pays for all that trouble and more.
> In general, if the disk is dead enough that you're looking at replacement, > you'll probably not be totally pleased with the results of those programs.. > I have replaced a couple of drives in my life - because a few sectors didn't read back right. I expect a overwrite program to be just fine under such circumstances.
> > There are also bulk erasers that reset every bit magnetically, > > but those will probably void the warranty too. (You'll > > need a low-level reformat to recreate sector addresses on the > > suddenly blank surface.) > > Note that this only works well for single-platter disks - the field > you need to get the *inner* surfaces of the platters, especially for > a 5 or 6 platter disk, is quite astounding....
Why would it be hard to reach the inner surfaces - the disks are not superconducting so the outer ones do not shield the inner ones from a strong magnetic field. You should be fine as long as the field extend far enough to get the entire drive. A high-frequency device might have trouble, but you don't need that - even a static field will do.
Helge Hafting
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