date:20120128

Hello,

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 10:41:36AM +, Ted Wager wrote:
 I used gparted to blank a couple of hdd's that I am getting rid of
 however the mbrr was not formatted and they still boot from grub.
 Anyone tell me how I format the drive so it is completely blank ?

Ah, the old how do I securely erase a drive chestnut. :) People
are often keen to go into a lot of detail about the ingenious
methods they use to overwrite data, destroy drives, etc. etc.
because clearly the security of their data is of immense importance
and you just can't be sure, right?

For all practical purposes, overwriting the entire disk just once
with something like dd, e.g.:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M

will render it unrecoverable. No data recovery company will promise
to be able to get any data whatsoever off of that. This is the
quickest way to achieve what you want while still ending up with a
working drive. If someone thinks they can get any data off of that,
they should be asked why they aren't in the commercial data recovery
business, since they apparently know how to do it better than anyone
else who is. :)

In theory there may be data left in inaccessible areas of the drive,
such as the spare sectors that the manufacturer included.  In theory
an entity with a vast amount of resources may be able to take your
drive apart in a lab and use minute differences in magnetic field to
guess at what was written before the single pass of data was written
over the top by dd.

If that is a realistic risk for you¹, then you may want to retire to
your island stronghold and instruct a henchman to run Darik's boot
and nuke (DBAN). This may take a day or more, especially if you use
one of the more thorough modes.

If you need quick and don't care about the drive working afterwards,
melt the platters to liquid or grind them down to dust.

Cheers,
Andy

¹ Or maybe if you just want to be able to honestly say to some third
  party whose data you held that it really is gone.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

2012-01-28 Thread Ted Wager

On Sat, 2012-01-28 at 14:46 +, Andy Smith wrote:
 Hello,
 
 On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 10:41:36AM +, Ted Wager wrote:
  I used gparted to blank a couple of hdd's that I am getting rid of
  however the mbrr was not formatted and they still boot from grub.
  Anyone tell me how I format the drive so it is completely blank ?
 
 Ah, the old how do I securely erase a drive chestnut. :) People
 are often keen to go into a lot of detail about the ingenious
 methods they use to overwrite data, destroy drives, etc. etc.
 because clearly the security of their data is of immense importance
 and you just can't be sure, right?
 
 For all practical purposes, overwriting the entire disk just once
 with something like dd, e.g.:
 
 $ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M
 
 will render it unrecoverable. No data recovery company will promise
 to be able to get any data whatsoever off of that. This is the
 quickest way to achieve what you want while still ending up with a
 working drive. If someone thinks they can get any data off of that,
 they should be asked why they aren't in the commercial data recovery
 business, since they apparently know how to do it better than anyone
 else who is. :)
 
 In theory there may be data left in inaccessible areas of the drive,
 such as the spare sectors that the manufacturer included.  In theory
 an entity with a vast amount of resources may be able to take your
 drive apart in a lab and use minute differences in magnetic field to
 guess at what was written before the single pass of data was written
 over the top by dd.
 
 If that is a realistic risk for you¹, then you may want to retire to
 your island stronghold and instruct a henchman to run Darik's boot
 and nuke (DBAN). This may take a day or more, especially if you use
 one of the more thorough modes.
 
 If you need quick and don't care about the drive working afterwards,
 melt the platters to liquid or grind them down to dust.
 
 Cheers,
 Andy
 
I am not bothered. abt the data..All I want is for the machine to boot
from the hdd so the buyer can install an os. If they want a Linux system
I will install it but if they want Windows they are on their own.
Regards
  Ted Wager


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

2012-01-28 Thread Colin Law

On 28 January 2012 16:27, Ted Wager t...@trufflesdad.plus.com wrote:

 I am not bothered. abt the data..All I want is for the machine to boot
 from the hdd so the buyer can install an os. If they want a Linux system
 I will install it but if they want Windows they are on their own.

To install an OS it is not necessary to boot from hdd, boot from
either linux or windows CD/DVD.   If you make the disk completely
blank as you originally asked it will not be able to boot from the hdd
as it will be blank.

Colin

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 16:27, Ted Wager t...@trufflesdad.plus.com wrote:
 I am not bothered. abt the data..All I want is for the machine to boot
 from the hdd so the buyer can install an os. If they want a Linux system
 I will install it but if they want Windows they are on their own.

Use a DOS boot floppy - or USB stick - and type:

fdisk /mbr

That's it.

There are boot floppy images for free download on:

http://www.bootdisk.com/


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr



On 28/01/12 16:34, Colin Law wrote:

 To install an OS it is not necessary to boot from hdd, boot from
 either linux or windows CD/DVD. If you make the disk completely blank
 as you originally asked it will not be able to boot from the hdd as it
 will be blank. Colin


I understand the problem.  Windows (any version) refuses to install
unless you try to install to a drive with a valid boot record.
Reformatting using gparted makes this impossible for Windows.  I get
around it by using clonezilla to clone the mbr from another drive onto
the drive that gparted has blanked and re-formatted to NTFS.  Windows
will then install OK.  For some reason known only to Microsoft (must be
a commercial consideration therefore) reformatting the drive under the
Windows installer will not overcome the problem.

Ah well, twas ever thus 

Regards,Barry.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 17:44, Barry Drake ubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com wrote:

 I understand the problem.  Windows (any version) refuses to install
 unless you try to install to a drive with a valid boot record.

What? No it doesn't!

Depends on the version. I don't think I have ever met a version that
won't install *at all* but several versionxs, including, I think, XP
pre-SP3, do not rewrite the MBR so leaving GRUB or LILO in there.

OTOH, many versions /do/ rewrite it even if they don't have to,
erasing the MBR  rendering Linux unbootable after installing Windows
on a dual-boot system.

 Reformatting using gparted makes this impossible for Windows.

No it doesn't. I do this frequently, at times on a weekly basis or
more.  No problems.

 I get
 around it by using clonezilla to clone the mbr from another drive onto
 the drive that gparted has blanked and re-formatted to NTFS.

The FDISK /MBR method is a *lot* quicker and easier, believe me.

You can also rewrite the MBR from the Recovery Console on a Win2K or
later install disk, or using the free Windows 7 Recovery CD:
http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

However, DOS is quicker and easier and works fine.

If you have 1 physical drive, remember to do this to all of them,
just in case. Again, this is easier with DOS than XP.


   Windows
 will then install OK.  For some reason known only to Microsoft (must be
 a commercial consideration therefore) reformatting the drive under the
 Windows installer will not overcome the problem.

Not true, but a reformat will not always reinitialise the boot record.
E.g. formatting a secondary drive or partition won't.

 Ah well, twas ever thus 

:¬)

Um. If anything, it was more straightforward in the days of Win9x.

TBH I have never dual-booted Windows 3 with Linux - I was not using
Linux that early; I only started in 1995 or so. I have many times
dual-booted Linux with plain MS-DOS, DR-DOS or FreeDOS, though. It's
handy to keep a small (32MB) primary bootable DOS partition for things
like firmware re-Flashing.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

2012-01-28 Thread scoundrel50a


On 28/01/12 16:27, Ted Wager wrote:

On Sat, 2012-01-28 at 14:46 +, Andy Smith wrote:

Hello,

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 10:41:36AM +, Ted Wager wrote:

I used gparted to blank a couple of hdd's that I am getting rid of
however the mbrr was not formatted and they still boot from grub.
Anyone tell me how I format the drive so it is completely blank ?

Ah, the old how do I securely erase a drive chestnut. :) People
are often keen to go into a lot of detail about the ingenious
methods they use to overwrite data, destroy drives, etc. etc.
because clearly the security of their data is of immense importance
and you just can't be sure, right?

For all practical purposes, overwriting the entire disk just once
with something like dd, e.g.:

 $ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M

will render it unrecoverable. No data recovery company will promise
to be able to get any data whatsoever off of that. This is the
quickest way to achieve what you want while still ending up with a
working drive. If someone thinks they can get any data off of that,
they should be asked why they aren't in the commercial data recovery
business, since they apparently know how to do it better than anyone
else who is. :)

In theory there may be data left in inaccessible areas of the drive,
such as the spare sectors that the manufacturer included.  In theory
an entity with a vast amount of resources may be able to take your
drive apart in a lab and use minute differences in magnetic field to
guess at what was written before the single pass of data was written
over the top by dd.

If that is a realistic risk for you¹, then you may want to retire to
your island stronghold and instruct a henchman to run Darik's boot
and nuke (DBAN). This may take a day or more, especially if you use
one of the more thorough modes.

If you need quick and don't care about the drive working afterwards,
melt the platters to liquid or grind them down to dust.

Cheers,
Andy




What is so wrong about wanting to be able to securely wipe an 
hdd.and why do people feel the need to be so condescending when 
somebody asks about it...trying to make the person asking look 
guilty..funny thing, you seem to know how to do it, even with the 
attitude..




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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr


On 28/01/12 17:31, Liam Proven wrote:

On 28 January 2012 16:27, Ted Wagert...@trufflesdad.plus.com  wrote:

I am not bothered. abt the data..All I want is for the machine to boot
from the hdd so the buyer can install an os. If they want a Linux system
I will install it but if they want Windows they are on their own.

Use a DOS boot floppy - or USB stick - and type:
fdisk /mbr
Thanks for the link.  I'll try to make a dos boot stick or boot cd.  I 
no longer have a floppy drive.  Actually, I did find that after 
re-formatting a drive using gparted, a Windows 7 installer disk refused 
to do anything because it declared that the target drive was not a valid 
bootable drive.  Before re-formatting, it was bootable into Windows XP 
and I re-formatted to get a fresh start.  I was not trying to use grub 
or set up dual boot.  I simply wanted a fresh install of Windows 7.  
Ubuntu was quite happy to install to the same drive.


In addition, I tried a Win XP install disk, and this failed with the 
same error message.  There seemed to be no way to get it to work until I 
restored the mbr.  As I had no dos or Windows to work from (using fdisk) 
Clonezilla provided me with a (slower) easy way to do the job.  I 
finished the day disliking Windows even more intensely than ever 
before.  Win 95 did at least let you use commandline tools such as fdisk 
and format from the install disk.  Then things got worse.


Regards,Barry.

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http://ubuntuadverts.org/


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr


On 28/01/12 17:31, Liam Proven wrote:
There are boot floppy images for free download on: 
http://www.bootdisk.com/ 


Free download?  The guy seems to want me to pay $4 for any of his 
downloads.  Could be worth it, but I'll stick with Clonezilla as it 
doesn't cost even $1.


Regards,Barry.

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http://ubuntuadverts.org/


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

Hello scoundrel50a,

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 06:40:33PM +, scoundrel50a wrote:
 What is so wrong about wanting to be able to securely wipe an  
 hdd.

Nothing. As I stated, a simple single pass of dd is all that's
needed to practically do that, and if you need more than that then
DBAN's your tool.

I use DBAN myself on anything that has other people's data on it
just so I can honestly say to them that the data is gone. For my own
stuff I am happy with a single pass of dd.

 and why do people feel the need to be so condescending when  
 somebody asks about it...trying to make the person asking look  
 guilty..funny thing, you seem to know how to do it, even with the  
 attitude..

Where is _your_ attitude coming from? I wasn't trying to make anyone
look guilty. No one even made any outlandish suggestions yet so who
would I be trying to make look guilty!? The people who do exactly
the same as what I do?

It is common that people think that all manner of extreme measures
are required, and I was just trying to head that off in a humourous
way so we didn't need to go there. As it turns out I completely
missed the mark anyway because he wasn't actually asking about
secure data deletion.

Maybe I hit a little too close to home. It's OK, scoundrel50a, I
won't come looking for your island fortress. Stand down your
henchpersons. Have a great weekend!

Cheers,
Andy

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

2012-01-28 Thread thegeeksquadron

Just curious to know this, as I don't format disks too often, but does 
formatting a HD rid it of any bad sectors? I assume not, but I'm a tad 
perplexed!

Nick
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Sender: ubuntu-uk-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:10:52 
To: ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com
Reply-To: UK Ubuntu Talk ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28/01/12 17:31, Liam Proven wrote:
 There are boot floppy images for free download on: 
 http://www.bootdisk.com/ 

Free download?  The guy seems to want me to pay $4 for any of his 
downloads.  Could be worth it, but I'll stick with Clonezilla as it 
doesn't cost even $1.

Regards,Barry.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

2012-01-28 Thread paul sutton

On 28/01/12 17:55, Liam Proven wrote:
 On 28 January 2012 17:44, Barry Drake ubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com wrote:
 I understand the problem.  Windows (any version) refuses to install
 unless you try to install to a drive with a valid boot record.
 What? No it doesn't!

 Depends on the version. I don't think I have ever met a version that
 won't install *at all* but several versionxs, including, I think, XP
 pre-SP3, do not rewrite the MBR so leaving GRUB or LILO in there.

 OTOH, many versions /do/ rewrite it even if they don't have to,
 erasing the MBR  rendering Linux unbootable after installing Windows
 on a dual-boot system.

 Reformatting using gparted makes this impossible for Windows.
 No it doesn't. I do this frequently, at times on a weekly basis or
 more.  No problems.

 I get
 around it by using clonezilla to clone the mbr from another drive onto
 the drive that gparted has blanked and re-formatted to NTFS.
 The FDISK /MBR method is a *lot* quicker and easier, believe me.

 You can also rewrite the MBR from the Recovery Console on a Win2K or
 later install disk, or using the free Windows 7 Recovery CD:
 http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

 However, DOS is quicker and easier and works fine.

 If you have 1 physical drive, remember to do this to all of them,
 just in case. Again, this is easier with DOS than XP.


   Windows
 will then install OK.  For some reason known only to Microsoft (must be
 a commercial consideration therefore) reformatting the drive under the
 Windows installer will not overcome the problem.
 Not true, but a reformat will not always reinitialise the boot record.
 E.g. formatting a secondary drive or partition won't.

 Ah well, twas ever thus 
 :¬)

 Um. If anything, it was more straightforward in the days of Win9x.

 TBH I have never dual-booted Windows 3 with Linux - I was not using
 Linux that early; I only started in 1995 or so. I have many times
 dual-booted Linux with plain MS-DOS, DR-DOS or FreeDOS, though. It's
 handy to keep a small (32MB) primary bootable DOS partition for things
 like firmware re-Flashing.



Back then you could create a boot disk and boot Linux from that,  it
would then point to the right place on the hdd,  so you could have dual
dos/win3.1  and Linux

Paul

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr


On 28/01/12 20:00, thegeeksquad...@ymail.com wrote:

Just curious to know this, as I don't format disks too often, but does 
formatting a HD rid it of any bad sectors? I assume not, but I'm a tad 
perplexed!


AFAIK the bad sectors on SMART aware drives are re-located and won't be 
restored when formatting.  Ubuntu is SMART-aware and tells you when a 
drive is in danger of failing.  Windows lets it fail catastrophically 
unless you have installed a SMART monitor application.  A few relocated 
sectors is OK.  However, even these are an indication that the drive is 
on its way to the great drive home in the sky, so best replace it while 
you can still get an error free copy.


Regards,Barry.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

2012-01-28 Thread paul sutton

On 28/01/12 18:40, scoundrel50a wrote:
 On 28/01/12 16:27, Ted Wager wrote:
 On Sat, 2012-01-28 at 14:46 +, Andy Smith wrote:
 Hello,

 On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 10:41:36AM +, Ted Wager wrote:
 I used gparted to blank a couple of hdd's that I am getting rid of
 however the mbrr was not formatted and they still boot from grub.
 Anyone tell me how I format the drive so it is completely blank ?
 Ah, the old how do I securely erase a drive chestnut. :) People
 are often keen to go into a lot of detail about the ingenious
 methods they use to overwrite data, destroy drives, etc. etc.
 because clearly the security of their data is of immense importance
 and you just can't be sure, right?

 For all practical purposes, overwriting the entire disk just once
 with something like dd, e.g.:

  $ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M

 will render it unrecoverable. No data recovery company will promise
 to be able to get any data whatsoever off of that. This is the
 quickest way to achieve what you want while still ending up with a
 working drive. If someone thinks they can get any data off of that,
 they should be asked why they aren't in the commercial data recovery
 business, since they apparently know how to do it better than anyone
 else who is. :)

 In theory there may be data left in inaccessible areas of the drive,
 such as the spare sectors that the manufacturer included.  In theory
 an entity with a vast amount of resources may be able to take your
 drive apart in a lab and use minute differences in magnetic field to
 guess at what was written before the single pass of data was written
 over the top by dd.

 If that is a realistic risk for you¹, then you may want to retire to
 your island stronghold and instruct a henchman to run Darik's boot
 and nuke (DBAN). This may take a day or more, especially if you use
 one of the more thorough modes.

 If you need quick and don't care about the drive working afterwards,
 melt the platters to liquid or grind them down to dust.

 Cheers,
 Andy



 What is so wrong about wanting to be able to securely wipe an
 hdd.and why do people feel the need to be so condescending
 when somebody asks about it...trying to make the person asking
 look guilty..funny thing, you seem to know how to do it, even with
 the attitude..



Agreed as in some cases you HAVE to ensure date can't be recovered.   Or
you may simply want to start over and re-install the system,  so a fully
blank hdd,  can rule out any problems that may occur later on. 



Paul

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

Hi Nick,

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 08:00:10PM +, thegeeksquad...@ymail.com wrote:
 Just curious to know this, as I don't format disks too often, but does 
 formatting a HD rid it of any bad sectors? I assume not, but I'm a tad 
 perplexed!

Not as such. Also it depends what you mean by format. By format,
most people mean just creating a partition table. This doesn't write
to the whole disk, so can't actually do anything to (most of) the
disk.

If you try to write a bad sector on a modern disk then it will
usually remap that sector to one from its pool of spare sectors.
That has the appearance of fixing the sector. It's normal for this
to happen very rarely over the whole life of the drive.

When there is serious damage to the mechanism of the drive, the
errors can come in a flood and deplete all the spare sectors
quickly, which is why it's important to replace a drive when the
remapped sectors count keeps going up.

Cheers,
Andy

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

Hi Paul,

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 08:16:19PM +, paul sutton wrote:
 On 28/01/12 18:40, scoundrel50a wrote:
  What is so wrong about wanting to be able to securely wipe an
  hdd.and why do people feel the need to be so condescending
  when somebody asks about it...trying to make the person asking
  look guilty..funny thing, you seem to know how to do it, even with
  the attitude..
 
 Agreed as in some cases you HAVE to ensure date can't be recovered.   Or
 you may simply want to start over and re-install the system,  so a fully
 blank hdd,  can rule out any problems that may occur later on. 

In what way is a disk that has had 0 written over it entirely not a
fully blank hdd?

Cheers,
Andy

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 19:02, Barry Drake ubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com wrote:
 On 28/01/12 17:31, Liam Proven wrote:

 On 28 January 2012 16:27, Ted Wagert...@trufflesdad.plus.com  wrote:

 I am not bothered. abt the data..All I want is for the machine to boot
 from the hdd so the buyer can install an os. If they want a Linux system
 I will install it but if they want Windows they are on their own.

 Use a DOS boot floppy - or USB stick - and type:
 fdisk /mbr

 Thanks for the link.  I'll try to make a dos boot stick or boot cd.  I no
 longer have a floppy drive.


Fair enough. Many don't. I still find them jolly useful myself.

 Actually, I did find that after re-formatting a
 drive using gparted, a Windows 7 installer disk refused to do anything
 because it declared that the target drive was not a valid bootable drive.

That may be the case, I am not denying it, but it's not GParted's
fault. I have installed many *many* copies of Windows onto disks
partitioned with Gparted. It must have been something else - perhaps
an invalid partitioning scheme, or out-of-order partitions, or
something.

  Before re-formatting, it was bootable into Windows XP and I re-formatted to
 get a fresh start.  I was not trying to use grub or set up dual boot.  I
 simply wanted a fresh install of Windows 7.  Ubuntu was quite happy to
 install to the same drive.

Ubuntu is a lot less fussy about partition layouts than Windows is.
Ubuntu will happily boot from a secondary (logical) partition, a
secondary drive and so on, so long as a bootloader gets the kernel
into RAM.

Windows, for a simple life, wants a primary bootable partition on the
first hard disk, and Win Vista/7 insist on it being formatted with
NTFS. XP  earlier will happily boot off FAT16 or FAT32.

You can install it into a logical partition, but it needs to write
some files into a bootable primary partition on the 1st drive if so.
I.e. the \WINDOWS folder and so on could be in partition D: on the
2nd disk, but the bootloader etc. have to be in a bootable primary
partition on disk 0.

 In addition, I tried a Win XP install disk, and this failed with the same
 error message.

Definitely a screwy partitioning setup, I suspect.

  There seemed to be no way to get it to work until I restored
 the mbr.  As I had no dos or Windows to work from (using fdisk)

FreeDOS will do it and is a free download.

 Clonezilla
 provided me with a (slower) easy way to do the job.  I finished the day
 disliking Windows even more intensely than ever before.

I can understand that!

 Win 95 did at least
 let you use commandline tools such as fdisk and format from the install
 disk.  Then things got worse.

It was easier in some ways. There are tools on the NT/XP/etc boot CD
or DVD to partition, format, set partitions bootable, rewrite the MBR,
the bootloader and so on but they are not easy to use. The
command-prompt partitioner, in particular, is a complete pig. I am
something of a specialist in this area and I've never got it to work
for me.


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 19:10, Barry Drake ubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com wrote:
 On 28/01/12 17:31, Liam Proven wrote:

 There are boot floppy images for free download on:
 http://www.bootdisk.com/


 Free download?  The guy seems to want me to pay $4 for any of his downloads.
  Could be worth it, but I'll stick with Clonezilla as it doesn't cost even
 $1.

I've been using the site for more than a decade  I've never paid.
It's not like he owns the software; it's mostly Microsoft copyright. I
just checked the site and I did not see any requests for payment or
anything. I am thus puzzled.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 20:00,  thegeeksquad...@ymail.com wrote:
 Just curious to know this, as I don't format disks too often, but does 
 formatting a HD rid it of any bad sectors? I assume not, but I'm a tad 
 perplexed!

No. Bad sectors are a hardware failure.

Quick formatting /can/ in theory re-mark bad blocks as usable, which
could be a problem. Actually, in practice, on any modern EIDE or later
drive, this is not an issue.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 20:10, paul sutton zl...@zleap.net wrote:

 Back then you could create a boot disk and boot Linux from that,

Er... You still can...? Or am I missing something?

The machine I'm typing on has 2 versions of Ubuntu, DOS, WinXP and Win7.

 it
 would then point to the right place on the hdd,  so you could have dual
 dos/win3.1  and Linux

I have done this since then, once, as an exercise. All I was saying is
that although I go back a long way with Linux - something like 17-18
years - in the days of Win3.1, I never tried it. I did try it long
after Win3 was obsolete.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 20:14, Barry Drake ubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com wrote:
 On 28/01/12 20:00, thegeeksquad...@ymail.com wrote:

 Just curious to know this, as I don't format disks too often, but does
 formatting a HD rid it of any bad sectors? I assume not, but I'm a tad
 perplexed!

 AFAIK the bad sectors on SMART aware drives are re-located and won't be
 restored when formatting.  Ubuntu is SMART-aware and tells you when a drive
 is in danger of failing.  Windows lets it fail catastrophically unless you
 have installed a SMART monitor application.  A few relocated sectors is OK.
  However, even these are an indication that the drive is on its way to the
 great drive home in the sky, so best replace it while you can still get an
 error free copy.

SMART is something slightly different.

The transparent bad-sector remapping you describe happen on /all/
modern hard disks - strictly, on all that use Logical Block
Addressing, I believe. When the drive controller meets a block that
needed several retries to read its contents, it maps out the affected
block and substitutes one from a hidden reserve area.

This is invisible to the computer or the OS, which is why I call it
transparent. The drive does it all on its own; no error is reported
up to the OS.

When the drive starts reporting bad blocks to the OS, that means that
the reserve area has been used up. This means that 10% or something of
the drive has gone bad; that in turn usually means that the drive is
failing and will die completely soon.

SMART is a reporting system. It tells the BIOS or the OS that the
drive is suffering from various kinds of error that suggest that it is
likely to fail soon. It's handy but it's imperfect: I have a couple of
drives that report SMART errors but actually work fine, and I have
seen approaching a hundred or so drives that have failed with no SMART
errors at all.

But given that disks are now cheap, better safe than sorry. It's
preferable to have it and to turn it on in the BIOS - and if your
machines are seldom rebooted, then to have SMART status monitoring in
your OS, too.


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 20:29, Andy Smith a...@bitfolk.com wrote:
 Hi Nick,

 On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 08:00:10PM +, thegeeksquad...@ymail.com wrote:
 Just curious to know this, as I don't format disks too often, but does 
 formatting a HD rid it of any bad sectors? I assume not, but I'm a tad 
 perplexed!

 Not as such. Also it depends what you mean by format. By format,
 most people mean just creating a partition table. This doesn't write
 to the whole disk, so can't actually do anything to (most of) the
 disk.

Hmm. I've not knowingly met that usage, but I will remember that as a warning!

 If you try to write a bad sector on a modern disk then it will
 usually remap that sector to one from its pool of spare sectors.
 That has the appearance of fixing the sector. It's normal for this
 to happen very rarely over the whole life of the drive.

 When there is serious damage to the mechanism of the drive, the
 errors can come in a flood and deplete all the spare sectors
 quickly, which is why it's important to replace a drive when the
 remapped sectors count keeps going up.

Yep, WHS.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 20:31, Andy Smith a...@bitfolk.com wrote:
 Hi Paul,

 On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 08:16:19PM +, paul sutton wrote:
 On 28/01/12 18:40, scoundrel50a wrote:
  What is so wrong about wanting to be able to securely wipe an
  hdd.and why do people feel the need to be so condescending
  when somebody asks about it...trying to make the person asking
  look guilty..funny thing, you seem to know how to do it, even with
  the attitude..
 
 Agreed as in some cases you HAVE to ensure date can't be recovered.   Or
 you may simply want to start over and re-install the system,  so a fully
 blank hdd,  can rule out any problems that may occur later on.

 In what way is a disk that has had 0 written over it entirely not a
 fully blank hdd?

Well, in theory, if you paid Kroll Ontrack £LOTS then they claim to be
able to get much or all of the data off a zero-overwritten drive by
meticulously examining the very edge of the tracks for a sort of
magnetic overspill. Costs tens of thousands or more, though.

This is why programs like DBAN to the multiple-overwrite thing; to
scramble even these marginal areas.

But in everyday practice, you're right, a zeroed-out drive is fully
blank to all intents and purposes. Much blanker than one that's just
been quick-formatted, or that has merely had its partitions removed.

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On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 09:24:52PM +, Liam Proven wrote:
Well, in theory, if you paid Kroll Ontrack £LOTS then they claim to be
able to get much or all of the data off a zero-overwritten drive by
meticulously examining the very edge of the tracks for a sort of
magnetic overspill. Costs tens of thousands or more, though.

I do not believe that any commercial data recovery company will
promise to be able to retrieve anything that corresponds to even a
small fraction of your data after you tell them you've done this.

Have you ever heard of a company promising to be able to do this?

http://whereismydata.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/deleting-and-wiping-data/

In fact companies such as Ontrack, who spend millions of dollars
on research into data recovery are not able to do this. This
wiping does not need to be done 33, 12, or even 3 times. Just
once.

There was once a challenge to see if anyone would be able to recover
data from a disk that was overwritten once, and after describing
what had been done, no company was interested in trying. However
IIRC the bounty for the challenge was something trivial like $100,
so it wasn't a very useful challenge unfortunately.

But supposing you have a team of people with electron microscopes
willing to spend months examining each sector of the surface of this
drive you have wiped once, the chances of working out what state
each bit was in before the wipe are 49% on modern drives:

http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/securityfocus/security-basics/2008-10/msg00199.html

i.e. you would achieve more success flipping a coin and writing 1
for heads and 0 for tails.

If anyone has ever been able to retrieve any useful data off of a
disk that's been wiped once, I've never heard of it. They should
tell someone, because they would be a world-wide sensation and no
doubt have governments beating a path to their door.

Even so, I still DBAN where other people's data is concerned,
because people always have this sort of doubt.

Cheers,
Andy

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

2012-01-28 Thread Jim Price


On 28/01/12 21:13, Liam Proven wrote:

On 28 January 2012 19:10, Barry Drakeubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com  wrote:

On 28/01/12 17:31, Liam Proven wrote:


There are boot floppy images for free download on:
http://www.bootdisk.com/



Free download? �The guy seems to want me to pay $4 for any of his downloads.
�Could be worth it, but I'll stick with Clonezilla as it doesn't cost even
$1.


I've been using the site for more than a decade  I've never paid.
It's not like he owns the software; it's mostly Microsoft copyright. I
just checked the site and I did not see any requests for payment or
anything. I am thus puzzled.


They wanted $9.75 from me. The link from this sentence in the article:

Please note that this download is no longer free, due to licensing 
restrictions imposed upon us.


linked to:

http://neosmart.net/blog/2011/windows-recovery-discs-updated-reinstated/

which explained how MS wanted their pound of flesh.

I too will be sticking to free tools. I find the Ubuntu server CDs ideal 
for re-installing a broken Grub2 MBR with minimum hassle.


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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 22:12, Jim Price d1vers...@hotmail.com wrote:
 On 28/01/12 21:13, Liam Proven wrote:

 On 28 January 2012 19:10, Barry Drakeubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com  wrote:

 On 28/01/12 17:31, Liam Proven wrote:


 There are boot floppy images for free download on:
 http://www.bootdisk.com/



 Free download? �The guy seems to want me to pay $4 for any of his
 downloads.
 �Could be worth it, but I'll stick with Clonezilla as it doesn't cost
 even
 $1.


 I've been using the site for more than a decade  I've never paid.

 It's not like he owns the software; it's mostly Microsoft copyright. I
 just checked the site and I did not see any requests for payment or
 anything. I am thus puzzled.


 They wanted $9.75 from me. The link from this sentence in the article:

 Please note that this download is no longer free, due to licensing
 restrictions imposed upon us.

 linked to:

 http://neosmart.net/blog/2011/windows-recovery-discs-updated-reinstated/

 which explained how MS wanted their pound of flesh.

 I too will be sticking to free tools. I find the Ubuntu server CDs ideal for
 re-installing a broken Grub2 MBR with minimum hassle.

Eh? That's not bootdisk.com, that's the Windows recovery CD! Something
totally different on a different site.

I shall keep mine safe, then.

It might also be worth searching the torrent indices for it. It was
widely out there at one time.

Also, MICROS~1 are [a] bloody idiots who have destroyed goodwill by
this and [b] rapacious money-grabbing swine.

Not that this will be news to anybody here, I suspect.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

On 28 January 2012 22:12, Andy Smith a...@bitfolk.com wrote:
Hi Liam,

I do not believe that any commercial data recovery company will
promise to be able to retrieve anything that corresponds to even a
small fraction of your data after you tell them you've done this.

Have you ever heard of a company promising to be able to do this?

http://whereismydata.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/deleting-and-wiping-data/

In fact companies such as Ontrack, who spend millions of dollars
on research into data recovery are not able to do this. This
wiping does not need to be done 33, 12, or even 3 times. Just
once.

http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/securityfocus/security-basics/2008-10/msg00199.html

i.e. you would achieve more success flipping a coin and writing 1
for heads and 0 for tails.

Even so, I still DBAN where other people's data is concerned,
because people always have this sort of doubt.

Hmm. Fair enough. I will take you word for it.

IIRC I was told this when touring Dr Solomon's, way back in the
mid-1990s when I was the staff technical expert on PC Pro magazine.
Perhaps in those days of relatively chunky data tracks, it was viable,
whereas now it isn't. I don't know.

Also, a bounty of $100? Forget it. Dr Solly's used to charge in the
thousands of pounds for normal data recovery off merely
mechanically-damaged drives. The extreme stuff cost *lots* more. I
wouldn't think they'd bother unless there was a prize of £x00,000 to
£x,000,000. It was a /very/ lucrative business - few could do what
they did.

Which is why they sold off the antivirus side of the business to
McAfee, which ultimately killed the company, I believe. Division of
some of the giant brains and so on.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr

2012-01-28 Thread Jim Price


On 28/01/12 22:36, Liam Proven wrote:

On 28 January 2012 22:12, Jim Priced1vers...@hotmail.com  wrote:

On 28/01/12 21:13, Liam Proven wrote:

On 28 January 2012 19:10, Barry Drakeubuntu-advertis...@gmx.comwrote:

On 28/01/12 17:31, Liam Proven wrote:


[snippage for brevity]

There are boot floppy images for free download on:
http://www.bootdisk.com/



Free download? �The guy seems to want me to pay $4 for any of his
downloads.



They wanted $9.75 from me. The link from this sentence in the article:



http://neosmart.net/blog/2011/windows-recovery-discs-updated-reinstated/



Eh? That's not bootdisk.com, that's the Windows recovery CD! Something
totally different on a different site.


My mistake - when I read The guy seems to want me to pay $4 for any of 
his downloads I assumed I was reading something further down the thread 
from this message of yours:


https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-uk/2012-January/032833.html

That does contain a link to neosmart, which no longer provides free 
downloads of their windows recovery CD.


Apologies for any confusion.


I shall keep mine safe, then.

It might also be worth searching the torrent indices for it. It was
widely out there at one time.

Also, MICROS~1 are [a] bloody idiots who have destroyed goodwill by
this and [b] rapacious money-grabbing swine.

Not that this will be news to anybody here, I suspect.


... as per bug no.1.

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Re: [ubuntu-uk] mbr