A Qnap NAS has a drive with some bad sectors, I want to RMA it, but before just want to figure out how to prepare a drive? It’s part of a raid 5 setup of 4 drives unencrypted. So I want to remove it and wipe it. Got a Linux machine I can use, but never done this before.

What are common Linux tools to do that sensibly?

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    517 hours ago

    Just keep in mind that you can’t wipe the bad sectors that have been remapped. That’s unlikely to be an issue for a personal drive, but something to consider if it held particularly sensitive information.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      416 hours ago

      Sectors are what, 4kb? The odds of something sensitive being in those each of those 4kb is low (but never zero).

      If the drive implements the ATA secure erase command properly, it should also clear all the remapped sectors too. But I don’t know if I trust them to implement it properly. Maybe try it and inspect the disk with a hex editor.