Wiping Hard Drives

[JayPaul]

Hi all,
A customer of mine recently asked for me to totally wipe everything from their hard drives, not just formatting. I downloaded the software 'Eraser' and used an adapter to hook the HDD to my laptop.
Although it can never actually see the HDD on the laptop, so I can't browse it or anything the Eraser software can see it. I wiped it as a test by UK standards 3 passes which is fairly intense for a wipe.
It took a couple of hours, now because I can't see it I also can't format it afterwards. I thoguht I would put it back and boot up the old MP 2550 tester anyway to see what happens, it loads for ages and eventually either comes up with SC670 or SC672, even if I try booting up without the HDD plugged in after. Has this totally ruined the Controller?
Has anyone done this type of thing before. I'm supposed to do this on 8 of their machines but if it can wreck perfectly good boards then I need to figure out another method.
Any input would be great

[guitar9199]

Hi all,
A customer of mine recently asked for me to totally wipe everything from their hard drives, not just formatting. I downloaded the software 'Eraser' and used an adapter to hook the HDD to my laptop.
Although it can never actually see the HDD on the laptop, so I can't browse it or anything the Eraser software can see it. I wiped it as a test by UK standards 3 passes which is fairly intense for a wipe.
It took a couple of hours, now because I can't see it I also can't format it afterwards. I thoguht I would put it back and boot up the old MP 2550 tester anyway to see what happens, it loads for ages and eventually either comes up with SC670 or SC672, even if I try booting up without the HDD plugged in after. Has this totally ruined the Controller?
Has anyone done this type of thing before. I'm supposed to do this on 8 of their machines but if it can wreck perfectly good boards then I need to figure out another method.
Any input would be great

Any software like "Eraser" is going to write random ones and zeros in every sector, but for a copier to recognize a hard drive it needs a clean format.

Here's a link to hopefully help your computer find the drive.

External Drive Not Showing Up or Recognized? Here Is the Fix

[slimslob]

The HDD most likely did not show in My Computer because it was not formatted/partitioned for the computers OS. If you use a Windows PC go to Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management. If it is not listed there, Software such as Eraser will not be able to see it. If it is listed, you can format/partition from there. You can also use a software such as Mini Tool Partition Wizard. It also can be used on SD cards and thumb drives.
MiniTool Partition Wizard | Best partition magic alternative for Windows PC and Server

[JayPaul]

Cheers both, I will give these a go next week when I get the time. I'm still slightly concerned how the copier wouldn't load up past sc 670 when the HDD wasn't even plugged in though, must have caused some corruption to controller not being able to recognise it's wiped patterns. It would be interesting if there is a way to fix that without replacing expensive components.

[davel]

Why did customer want drive wiped, if disposing of machine remove drive, give to them for their IT to wipe/destroy.

[slimslob]

Why did customer want drive wiped, if disposing of machine remove drive, give to them for their IT to wipe/destroy.

In fact, at one time that is what Ricoh recomment.

[igormclven]

The disk is detected but is not seen in the equip because it has no format. The most appropriate as you have already written above is, first apply a complete erase. And then to adjust as disk to be MBR and to execute a formatting in the machine, this will remove the error SC and the disk will be clean and unrecoverable the old information.

[tsbservice]

I would get the big hammer and smash it, but that's just me.
Seriously afaik KonMin has function to overwrite HDD data with several options available and print confirmation report, although I have to admit I never did it. Still sounds much better than removing HDD, connecting it to PC and using third party software...

[JayPaul]

I'm not sure why they wanted it, I think it was because they had just been bought out so the customer turned huge right near the end of contract so we were fighting to keep them against a canon dealer. So we probably promised them a load of stuff and said how we did this, that and the other (HDD wipe must have been mentioned to show how gdpr compliant we are etc)
We lost the customer, but naturally want to keep them happy incase the canon guys end up being bad so they come back to us, which is why I'm having to do this. I did almost recommend that the machines were so old I may as well just smash the hard drives to pieces but as they are all working machines we are selling them to a company who then ships to Africa, so they still have value while working with hdd in them.
Doing it isn't so bad, only takes 5 mins to remove hard drive and plug it into laptop, then takes about 15 seconds to start the wipe, leave the laptop running while I'm busy doing other stuff and put hard drive back in later.
Formatting will be good enough once this is out the way and I can resume normal life of phoning customers to say 'have you tried turning it off and on again' or 'have you cleaned the slit glass... not the big section of glass, just the thin strip of glass to the left of it... no I said... ok why are you taking the toner bottles out?'

[keithxxiii]

Try diskpart.exe

list disk
select disk
clean
create partition primary

then go to disk management and perform a clean format or from diskpart alone, type format