Little known fact: refreshing the tracking page not only tells the company that you are invested in your package's arrival time, this telling them to prioritize it, it also pumps electrons into the cardboard so that it is attracted to the fastest moving delivery vehicle.
theatrically turn away from the tracking page and make it feel like you don't care, it can smell your fear, the same way a printer does, and it'll then arrive a day after you need it the most
If it's a spinning disk hard drive then do a low level format i.e. do a security write zeros on the whole disk (be sure to delete all partitions first). This will try to write a zero to every single sector, and any bad sectors will be removed from use.
I don't think you need to delete the partitions separately, since it's just a table at the very beginning of which parts of the disk belong to which partition?
So if you dd zeroes over everything, the first thing that gets deleted is the partitioning table
I might be wrong here, or maybe it doesn't apply to every situation, but that's how I've understood it to work
Also a tip for OP: don't write zeroes over it, but random data (dd if=/dev/urandom ...). It's a bit more secure as it makes it harder to see the size and location of the encrypted data on the disk
I've found that on some systems and some utility apps, if there are partitions present then doing a zeroing pass only zeros the partition rather than the entire drive itself
Correct, it was the built it disk utility app on Mac. I had a giant drive with a few partitions and clicked to do a zero pass and it finished in a half second. Obviously there was no way it completed that fast. I did some empirical testing based on completion time and sure enough it only zeroes a single partition rather than the entire disk
Recover the data on it. Burn it with fire.
Cry because you saw what it was.
Ask yourself why there is a school report on an animation studio on the "new" laptop your "stepmothers" mother bought and used towards the end as she lost her senses thinking people were spying on her trying to hide everything from "the them" deleting what ever she thought was spying on her.
It wasn't that bad, mostly sad to see all the images she removed, and difficult to find everywhere the credit cards where used because she removed all emails and text messages.
No kidding, once I was able to exactly follow the route of my laptop shipped from Lenovo (China) on flightradar after a careful study of carrier/parcel number/tracking events time and don't remember what else. It was literal real time tracking. Don't even remember how I did it.
I don't mind dd when I'm not in a hurry, but I usually prefer to just use the built in KDE disk utility. I'm pretty sure its based on Parted and DD under the hood.
Tip number 2: check smart if there are relocated sectors return it
Tip number 3: run badblocks on the drive, (-w mode) and if there are no errors then check smart again, if there are errors or relocated sectors return the drive
What kind of HDD? for what purpose? For what budget?
"Don't buy used" is a dumb tip because it means nothing and addresses nothing.
I use a WD Enterprise HDD from 2012. I bought it used. It passes all tests with flying colours, zero issues so far... it keeps a mirror of my backup. It's not my main backup, it's a copy of a copy. Guess what? I paid an extremely low price for it as a student on a budget, yet it was already proven useful many times both for the backups but also to keep my torrents seeding for longer, and it if does indeed fail... no biggie, not even my backup is compromised.
There are excellent refurbished HDDs too. Either way, "don't buy used" is the kind of blanket statement somebody cosplaying as a infosec home lab data specialist comments on Lemmy, but means absolutely nothing and offers no useful advice.
I've never cosplayed as an "infosec home lab data specialist", but I've had many bad personal experiences with used harddrives, drives that were working perfectly fine but failed after few months from several sources.
Your tip 1 isn't good for all situations. I have a 4 drive RAID 10 setup I have zero issues putting a used drive in after I test and inspect. Used doesn't mean trash, it's all situational.
Also, backup backup backup.
And "used" could be used wrong here, I typically use serverpartdeals and get 20TB+ drive sizes, refurbished. They come with a 5 year warranty and will get them replaced if there are issues.
Because there's a rather high likelihood that the HDD has been mistreated and will fail soon, it's a gamble. Or at least I've had bad experiences with used hard drives personally.
If you the seller has warranty and you don't mind the hassle of shipping back and possibly paying for the return shipping and pray that everything goes smoothly and you actually get the money back or a working replacement then it can be a good option, I personally rather not go through all that stress.
I'm trying to decide between a PATA IDE drive for authenticity or getting a new controller board for my PS2 to use a SATA drive I already have laying around. It'd certainly be easier to use the sata drive but like... Authenticity tho
73 Comments
BennyInc@feddit.org · 120 pts · 354d
Tip: keep refreshing the tracking page every 60 seconds. This makes the parcel travel even faster.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz · 23 pts · 354d
No it's like bittorrent downloads, if you look at it it goes slower!
x4740N@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 354d
For me it goes faster for some reason when I look at it but gets slower when I look away
Edgarallenpwn@midwest.social · 4 pts · 354d
The magic packet fairies are no different than us. Move the data when the boss is looking, and have some fun when they walk away.
Axolotl_cpp@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 353d
Probably the OS saying "nuh uh, if you don't have the window focused then i'il cap his download speed"
MarauderIIC@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 353d
Little known fact: refreshing the tracking page not only tells the company that you are invested in your package's arrival time, this telling them to prioritize it, it also pumps electrons into the cardboard so that it is attracted to the fastest moving delivery vehicle.
(Just kidding, neither of these things are true.)
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 353d
Make sure you use a red theme (maybe with flames) for your browser.
shneancy@lemmy.world · 55 pts · 354d
theatrically turn away from the tracking page and make it feel like you don't care, it can smell your fear, the same way a printer does, and it'll then arrive a day after you need it the most
Beacon@fedia.io · 33 pts · 354d
If it's a spinning disk hard drive then do a low level format i.e. do a security write zeros on the whole disk (be sure to delete all partitions first). This will try to write a zero to every single sector, and any bad sectors will be removed from use.
redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 16 pts · 354d
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Badblocks
dd /dev/urandom after if you're encrypting the disk
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 pts · 354d
I don't think you need to delete the partitions separately, since it's just a table at the very beginning of which parts of the disk belong to which partition?
So if you
ddzeroes over everything, the first thing that gets deleted is the partitioning tableI might be wrong here, or maybe it doesn't apply to every situation, but that's how I've understood it to work
Also a tip for OP: don't write zeroes over it, but random data (
dd if=/dev/urandom ...). It's a bit more secure as it makes it harder to see the size and location of the encrypted data on the diskBeacon@fedia.io · 5 pts · 354d
I've found that on some systems and some utility apps, if there are partitions present then doing a zeroing pass only zeros the partition rather than the entire drive itself
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 354d
I’m guessing that is not dd
naeap@sopuli.xyz · 9 pts · 354d
Yeah, dd does as told and doesn't care about your tears about the stupid typo
Beacon@fedia.io · 3 pts · 354d
Correct, it was the built it disk utility app on Mac. I had a giant drive with a few partitions and clicked to do a zero pass and it finished in a half second. Obviously there was no way it completed that fast. I did some empirical testing based on completion time and sure enough it only zeroes a single partition rather than the entire disk
ayyy@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 353d
I miss when Disk Utility was good and simple and predictable on MacOS. It’s such steaming shit now.
lurch@sh.itjust.works · 25 pts · 354d
yeah, wipe that shit, especially an MBR if present.
... or, if you're evil, run photorec /s
Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 19 pts · 354d
When it finally arrives you should run some tests to ensure the drive is not bad. This repo is a decent resource: https://github.com/Spearfoot/disk-burnin-and-testing
skulkbane@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 354d
Recover the data on it. Burn it with fire. Cry because you saw what it was.
Ask yourself why there is a school report on an animation studio on the "new" laptop your "stepmothers" mother bought and used towards the end as she lost her senses thinking people were spying on her trying to hide everything from "the them" deleting what ever she thought was spying on her.
stinky@redlemmy.com · 5 pts · 353d
hi what
skulkbane@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 353d
An Oddly specific example, that could have happened to anyone... me.
Ignore it I have issues and constantly want to talk about myself.
stinky@redlemmy.com · 4 pts · 353d
No it's cool
I uh
I'm sorry you went through that. Glad you have a sense of humor about it
skulkbane@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 353d
It wasn't that bad, mostly sad to see all the images she removed, and difficult to find everywhere the credit cards where used because she removed all emails and text messages.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 353d
Is this a reference?
dumbass@aussie.zone · 11 pts · 354d
This is why I stopped ordering from wish, I study the tracking like I'm investigating the cartel.
Engywuck@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 354d
No kidding, once I was able to exactly follow the route of my laptop shipped from Lenovo (China) on flightradar after a careful study of carrier/parcel number/tracking events time and don't remember what else. It was literal real time tracking. Don't even remember how I did it.
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 354d
With wish, that might be exactly what you are investigating.
VinesNFluff@pawb.social · 10 pts · 353d
Don't look at it.
Boot into a linux live usb
Run
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<driveid>I probably didn't get that perfect, but, close enough. Look it up on the internet or check the
manpage idkzephiriz@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 353d
What is this where did my OS go?
I love dd. Hate using USB programs to burn iso they are all different and weird but man dd is great.
ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 353d
I don't mind dd when I'm not in a hurry, but I usually prefer to just use the built in KDE disk utility. I'm pretty sure its based on Parted and DD under the hood.
tiramichu@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 353d
When it comes to old drives, looking is half the fun.
VinesNFluff@pawb.social · 1 pts · 349d
Sounds like a surefire way to see wank-bank you wanted no part in and which definitely doesn't line up with your turn-ons.
sefra1@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 353d
Yes, tip number 1: never buy an used HDD
Tip number 2: check smart if there are relocated sectors return it
Tip number 3: run badblocks on the drive, (-w mode) and if there are no errors then check smart again, if there are errors or relocated sectors return the drive
Good luck!
kadu@scribe.disroot.org · 6 pts · 353d
That's not a good tip.
sefra1@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 353d
It's the best tip, buying an used HDD is asking for trouble
kadu@scribe.disroot.org · 3 pts · 353d
What kind of HDD? for what purpose? For what budget?
"Don't buy used" is a dumb tip because it means nothing and addresses nothing.
I use a WD Enterprise HDD from 2012. I bought it used. It passes all tests with flying colours, zero issues so far... it keeps a mirror of my backup. It's not my main backup, it's a copy of a copy. Guess what? I paid an extremely low price for it as a student on a budget, yet it was already proven useful many times both for the backups but also to keep my torrents seeding for longer, and it if does indeed fail... no biggie, not even my backup is compromised.
There are excellent refurbished HDDs too. Either way, "don't buy used" is the kind of blanket statement somebody cosplaying as a infosec home lab data specialist comments on Lemmy, but means absolutely nothing and offers no useful advice.
sefra1@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 352d
I've never cosplayed as an "infosec home lab data specialist", but I've had many bad personal experiences with used harddrives, drives that were working perfectly fine but failed after few months from several sources.
kadu@scribe.disroot.org · 1 pts · 352d
And that anecdote somehow means "never buy used drives, no matter what variables are at play"
xactoman@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 353d
i have many hgst renewed drives, just use HD Sentinel its fine
thermal_shock@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 353d
Incorrect again.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 353d
Your tip 1 isn't good for all situations. I have a 4 drive RAID 10 setup I have zero issues putting a used drive in after I test and inspect. Used doesn't mean trash, it's all situational.
Also, backup backup backup.
And "used" could be used wrong here, I typically use serverpartdeals and get 20TB+ drive sizes, refurbished. They come with a 5 year warranty and will get them replaced if there are issues.
sefra1@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 352d
Well, that's good to know, I've always avoided those drives and tend to pay extra for smaller drives so I can get them new.
Peter_Arbeitslos@feddit.org · 1 pts · 352d
Why shouldn't one? Because SSDs are more reliable or what?
sefra1@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 352d
Because there's a rather high likelihood that the HDD has been mistreated and will fail soon, it's a gamble. Or at least I've had bad experiences with used hard drives personally.
If you the seller has warranty and you don't mind the hassle of shipping back and possibly paying for the return shipping and pray that everything goes smoothly and you actually get the money back or a working replacement then it can be a good option, I personally rather not go through all that stress.
fckreddit@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 354d
Meditate until you reach the realization that, hdd is useless, all material stuff is useless and you have reached nirvana.
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 354d
But I was downloading nirvana on my used hdd.
ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 354d
use data recovery software to find out what used to be on there
PattyMcB@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 354d
Porn... guaranteed
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one · 9 pts · 354d
Just hope it's legal porn.
Edgarallenpwn@midwest.social · 5 pts · 354d
Quick way to turn a 12tb drive into a 8tb drive on arrival.
ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 353d
i heard trump has pedobytes of porn stashed…
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 353d
What do you think the giant Utah data centre is for?
14 year old’s snapchat nudes.
ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 353d
oh, i figured it was for spying on everyone but that makes more sense
elucubra@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 353d
I don't buy used HDDs, or brake pads, or helmets, or climbing rope, or...
Agent641@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 353d
Condoms
RickAstleyfounddead@lemy.lol · 1 pts · 353d
You can install Linux on it. And occasionally backup all personal files
Atlusb@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 354d
I'm very impatient. I find planning how you will use the item helps a bit.
stinky@redlemmy.com · 7 pts · 353d
You guys are ordering packages?
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 353d
I used to order packages when I had money a long time ago. It was pretty cool. AMA.
x4740N@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 354d
This was me when I was ordering the parts for my gaming pc
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 354d
Then when they get here they sit in the boxes for 6 months before the build just as God intended
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 353d
I feel this deep in my homelab.
stupidcasey@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 354d
Are you the reason eBay asks for GPS data?
fascicle@leminal.space · 2 pts · 354d
sirico@feddit.uk · 5 pts · 354d
Start emailing and bombing review sites until you get a photo of it in dispatch
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 354d
Turns out, you already have a used HDD.
stoy@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 354d
I suggest waiting for delivery before further action.
ameancow@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 353d
Fleur_@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 353d
Infamous advice after purchasing questions
deltapi@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 353d
I bought a used external HDD for the interfaces - esata, usb3, FireWire 800. Lets me move data at max speed between my iBook, MacBook, pc...
...turns out it was stolen. :(
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 2 pts · 349d
30 minutes of waiting later: "Oh my god, just ship it already!"
ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 353d
What kind of HDD did you get?
I'm trying to decide between a PATA IDE drive for authenticity or getting a new controller board for my PS2 to use a SATA drive I already have laying around. It'd certainly be easier to use the sata drive but like... Authenticity tho
inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 353d
Emulator and save the PS2 for all posterity?
ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 353d
Naur lol.
The PS2 is already slightly modded, got it at a retro shop.
Since the seals are broken, and work has already been done I have no qualms about modding it further.
Also I don't have an emulator that can output to a CRT sooooo...
I just need freeHDloader and OPL on it because the motors in the optical drive are beginning to burn out.
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 352d
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 352d
BilSabab@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 353d
don't order used SSD.