Gary said:
Hi,
I need to read and erase a some Ext3 formatted hard drives
from an external enclosure. There are a number of Ext3
drivers for windows on the net but none explicitly say they
will work for an external drive. Does it matter to a driver that
the drive is external rather than internal?
The driver needs to read some backups from the drives
and erase (does Ext3 have an alternative to reformatting?)
some personal files before sending the unit back to the
manufacturer.
Thanks,
Gary
They mention USB Mass Storage devices here.
http://www.fs-driver.org/relnotes.html
http://www.fs-driver.org/faq.html#acc_ext3
In terms of erasing a disk before returning it to the manufacturer,
there are a couple options. DBAN is a program while will
erase *all* hard drives connected to the computer. (Therefore,
only the target disk should be connected before booting DBAN.
And yes, there are people who have left valuable disks connected,
and then used DBAN. Which is why I mention it.)
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=208932
An alternative, is a program that accesses an erasure flag inside
modern drives. Once the flag is set, the drive erases itself,
and will continue erasing until the job is done. Then the erase
flag is cleared. Such a feature, allows a user in a matter of seconds,
to set the erasure flag, and give the drive to another user. They
won't be able to do anything with the drive, until the internal
erasure algorithm inside the drive is finished (runs whenever drive
is powered). Then, the drive will return to normal, and accept
normal commands.
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=129
For SecureErase, I'd leave the drive powered for a couple
hours, after the flag is set, and let the internal erasure
operation run to completion. And then send it back to the
manufacturer.
The internal erasure feature is supposed to be supported on
modern EIDE/SATA drives, but not apparently on SCSI drives.
HTH,
Paul
