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Forum Discussion
Netgear ReadyNAS 316 - How to safely erase data, when selling my NAS?
I am about to sell my Netgear ReadyNAS 316, and I want to make it absolutely safe to do that, without the buyer beeing able to retrieve *any data whatsoever* from the disks.
When selling a Personal Computer, I use software to overwrite the disk sectors with "garbage". Will I be forced to the very same process, mounting a disk from the NAS at a time in my PC and run this software to render the data "impossible" to retrive?
I am not exactly sure how the option of a "Factory Reset" on the 316 actually works. It is stated that "The factory default reboot process resets the storage system to factory settings, erases all data, resets all defaults, and reformats the disk to X-RAID2". I suppose this does *not* mean that the disk sectors will be overwritten with "garbage", thus making it "impossible" to retrive the original data?
Since that kind of a process would take a very long time with (in this case) four 4-TB-disks, I do not think such an overwriting process will take place when "Factory Resetting". Would a "Factory Reset", and thereafter physically moving a couple of disk around in the cabinet, and then doing another "Factory Reset" perhaps accomplish a level of erasement of the data between the two methods above?
2 Replies
One option is to sell the NAS diskless.
Castor wrote:
I am about to sell my Netgear ReadyNAS 316, and I want to make it absolutely safe to do that, without the buyer beeing able to retrieve *any data whatsoever* from the disks.
I am not exactly sure how the option of a "Factory Reset" on the 316 actually works.
It formats the drives, and then rebuilds the RAID. I don't believe it zeros the drives (or puts random data on them).
Shuffling the disks and doing a second reset won't reduce the risks. Someone skilled with the raid btrfs file system might be able to retrieve data. It would be difficult, but I don't think it would be impossible.
Castor wrote:
When selling a Personal Computer, I use software to overwrite the disk sectors with "garbage". Will I be forced to the very same process, mounting a disk from the NAS at a time in my PC and run this software to render the data "impossible" to retrive?
This would of course work.
It is possible to overwrite the disks in linux using ssh (the dd command will do it). You could use that to overwrite your current data volume - the md12X raid array(s) - and then do a factory reset. It would take a while (as long as a RAID scrub or resync).
I don't know how large your drives are or how much you expect to get from them, but simply selling without the drives may be your best option. For example, I see eBay sellers selling a NAS full of 2 or 3TB drives and I wonder why. The buyer is likely to want to put larger drives in it, and selling with the drives increases both the asking price and shipping cost, potentially sending buyers elsewhere.
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