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    Hard drives on backorder for two years as AI data centers trigger HDD shortage

    (www.tomshardware.com)
    138 points pabs3 | 14 comments | 12 Nov 25 05:36 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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    karlkloss ◴[12 Nov 25 07:05 UTC] No.45897158[source]▶
    And when the AI bubble bursts, "refurbished" HDDs and GPUs will flood the market. Save your money now and be prepared.
    replies(4): >>45897441 #>>45897779 #>>45899005 #>>45905947 #
    Nux ◴[12 Nov 25 08:39 UTC] No.45897779[source]▶
    GPUs yes, but there'll be no HDDs making it alive, they'll get destroyed to protect whatever rubbish they had on.
    replies(4): >>45898933 #>>45899550 #>>45902830 #>>45904076 #
    1. pmontra ◴[12 Nov 25 12:53 UTC] No.45899550[source]▶
    HDD can be written multiple times with random data if data centers really have to protect what their former customers wrote on them. I never looked at those details in standard contracts.

    There is also encryption at rest.

    replies(6): >>45899888 #>>45900464 #>>45903887 #>>45905249 #>>45908119 #>>45908151 #
    2. teeray ◴[12 Nov 25 13:30 UTC] No.45899888[source]▶
    > HDD can be written multiple times with random data

    Which costs more in compute than simply throwing the drive in a shredder

    replies(2): >>45903924 #>>45905280 #
    3. tencentshill ◴[12 Nov 25 14:15 UTC] No.45900464[source]▶
    They have enough investor money they don't need to recoup it selling used drives. Straight to the shredder.
    4. jimwalsh ◴[12 Nov 25 18:29 UTC] No.45903887[source]▶
    All the large datacenter/cloud companies do not let hard drives leave the building.
    5. walterbell ◴[12 Nov 25 18:31 UTC] No.45903924[source]▶
    What's the disposal method for shredded drives?
    replies(1): >>45904915 #
    6. faeyanpiraat ◴[12 Nov 25 19:23 UTC] No.45904915{3}[source]▶
    Mount Doom
    7. SoftTalker ◴[12 Nov 25 19:41 UTC] No.45905249[source]▶
    All you really need to do is write one pass of zeros on them. That will prevent anyone but a very dedicated adversary with expensive equipment from recovering any data, especially on TB scale drives.

    Can still take hours per drive though, which is why a lot of people skip it.

    replies(2): >>45905700 #>>45907777 #
    8. rwyinuse ◴[12 Nov 25 19:42 UTC] No.45905280[source]▶
    Not really, if we give the HDD some resale value. There's a market for used but functional hard drives.
    9. edoceo ◴[12 Nov 25 20:07 UTC] No.45905700[source]▶
    I make a random 1MB chunk, then write that all over the drive, at overlapping offsets. I've been told that really clears it. On IDE-spinning-rust disks I trusted it, not sure if I should trust these modern SSD
    replies(1): >>45906905 #
    10. p1mrx ◴[12 Nov 25 21:21 UTC] No.45906905{3}[source]▶
    Why rewrite the same 1MB chunk, instead of making new random chunks?

    Redundant data at least opens the possibility that the drive could deduplicate.

    replies(1): >>45908677 #
    11. krior ◴[12 Nov 25 22:30 UTC] No.45907777[source]▶
    Or encrypt it and just trash the encryption header.
    12. PeaceTed ◴[12 Nov 25 23:00 UTC] No.45908119[source]▶
    When I used to do computer refurbishment, 'Boot and Nuke' was great for this. Load it up at boot, and write over the with random junk a few times.
    13. ComputerGuru ◴[12 Nov 25 23:03 UTC] No.45908151[source]▶
    I wrote hddrand to write random data and optionally read it back to verify integrity. https://github.com/mqudsi/hddrand
    14. edoceo ◴[13 Nov 25 00:01 UTC] No.45908677{4}[source]▶
    Cause making new random was taking too much time.