Re: FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE Now Available

On Wed, 2023-04-12 at 05:43 +0200, Polytropon wrote:
> > And the vpo(4) driver for parallel SCSI drives is also gone;
> > how am I supposed to read my important business files stored
> > on a parallel Zip drive now?! ;-)

Hi,

a few days ago I experienced that secure erasing data from older SATA3
SSDs doesn't work, since the vendor's secure erase utility for the older
SSDs cannot be booted using new hardware. While SATA3 isn't an issue,
maybe the old utility fails to boot due to a PKCS#7 signature issue of
the Linux kernel they are using for their bootable utility. I don't
know.

The SSDs are just a few years old, the vendor's utility supporting those
SSDs is also a few years old. The new utility doesn't support SSDs that
are a few years old.

It's not only tricky to get back old data, from very old hardware, it
can also be hard to get rid of data on relatively modern hardware.

I suspect that more users want to get rid of data on older drives, than
on new drives.

Regards,
Ralf

PS anecdote:

While a new mobo's firmware might support the Compatibility Support
Module, a new Intel processor graphics might not allow to enable it. I'm
migrating to new hardware and it already took me several days to get a
buzzer working, to always and not just randomly provide POST beep
signals. To get help from support related to the power-on self-test
signals, they (Gigabyte) asked me to make a screenshot of Windows
software that provides system information. I asked them if I'm allowed
to provide the wanted information without providing a screenshot from
Windows software, especially since no operating system is involved at
all during POST. No screenshot from a Windows install of a system that
fails to provide always audible POST signals, no support! They didn't
tell me that the firmware's slowest fast boot option (it has several
levels of fast boot) is the cause for the issue. I found it out myself.