Re: How to zero a failing disk drive before disposal?

In message <0bd5d79d35bb036fc73cd226edae1b969b22e3ee.camel@riseup.net>, 
Ralf Mardorf <ralf-mardorf@riseup.net> wrote:

>After countless discussions about [1] and having recovered and not
>recovered lost data myself, I am firmly convinced that it is sufficient
>for a private household to overwrite just 1 time. After that Joe and
>Jane Lunchbucket can't recover the data anymore and it's also quasi
>impossible for a geek to recover something.

Agree.  But I'm a "belt & suspenders" kind of guy. :-)

>The problem with the Lunchbucket family's HDDs is that they only replace
>them when they are defective anyway. At best, you can free up stuck
>heads and be happy if you can get your 4 TB drive overwritten at all.

I should know one way or the other in about 8 hours.

>It is not for nothing that it is said that you should mount a drive
>"read only" as soon as possible after data has been lost in order to
>have any chance of recovering anything at all.

Fortunately, I had the Good Sense to have multiple recent backups, so
I don't believe I lost anything.  But I cloned the failing drive onto
a fresh near-new drive (which I'm using now) which could posibly mean
that I have some corrupted files on the new production drive. I'm in
the process of md5'ing all important files on both the new production
drive and one of my backups.  When that's all done I'll compare the two
sets of md5 hashes and retrieve anything where I got a mismatch from
the backup drive.  (I believe that the backup in question was made
_before_ I installed the now-failing drive and tried to use it as a
production drive.)