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20 GB SATA drives? Non-starter?

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LowDog

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Why do you think manufacturers don't produce 20 GB SATA drives? The best I can find is a 40 GB drive and I only managed to find one with that capacity. Most of the others are 80 GB +.

I like to wipe my drives periodically and anything over 20 GB takes quite a while for 7 passes or more. I'm just curious as to why there aren't any of these around (are they around?).

I can't be the only one that would like to have one. I'm lucky if I even use 5 GB worth. I suppose it'd be great if I found some software that would only wipe sections of the drive that it knows data is actually on. But even so, I'd like to have a 20 GB SATA drive.
 
my best guess, would be to look at the size of the platters that are being used now, and see what is the smallest platter. I don't know of any drives that are using 20GB platters anymore.

Also, MB per $, I'm sure the 20GB wouldn't look very appealing.
 
First of all, why do you do a full format, and why 7 passes? Is there something on the drive that you dont want anyone to find out about?

Secondly, they don't make 20GB SATA drives because there really isn't a demand for them. For most, that is too small.
 
bchur83 said:
First of all, why do you do a full format, and why 7 passes? Is there something on the drive that you dont want anyone to find out about?
Click to expand...

How did I know someone would ask this? :rolleyes:

What's the difference, is it not my prerogative if I so choose to do 7 passes? Most people wipe to get rid of sensitive info. My reasons are not nefarious if that's what you're getting at.
 
Well, most people don't do a full format, let alone 7 times over. So, for most, the drive being larger doesnt matter much. Do you need a SATA 20GB drive? Won't a standard IDE drive do? Standard 20GB drives are readily available.

You could take a larger drive and partition it into multiple 20GB Partitions.
 
writing zeroes over and over isn't as good of a way to wipe data as random strings and such. (or the old DOD standard of writing zeroes then all ones, then zeroes etc and ending with one random string run) But just to make ya paranoid, DOD standards of wiping the HDD changed a while ago for anything secret clearance or higher (they now use an incredibly high powered electromagnetic wiping device).

As for 20gb SATA drives, they just stopped making drives that small and when they stopped SATA wasn't around. All platters now adays are bigger than 20gb as well so there is no point in selling something as 20gb when they're all capable of much more. That's like asking why don't they make the 7800GTX for AGP or PCI?
 
It's just supply and demand. No one is demanding a 20gb sata drive, so no one is making them. I for one wouldn't buy less than a 40gb from anyone, in fact I would probably buy an 80-120gb as they are usually better $ per mb.

You have a special need for these small drives. You might look to alternative sources, maybe some SCSI drives? They can be as fast as Sata, and are usually avalible in smaller sizes.
 
THe only thing I could suggest would be to buy a 20gb IDE drive, and then get an IDE to SATA converter.

Otherwise its just not economical for the hardrive makers to build 20gb drivers anymore so I doubt you'll see a SATA one.
 
Its not just about supply and demand. To make a 20gig drive it takes all the same ammount of raw material and manufacturing time as it takes to make a 200gig drive. But even if it didnt take as much materials, it would still be a waste of factory equipment and time to be churning out drives that less people are interested in.

I would avoid using an old 20gig drive because old drives are typically slower no matter what the capacity. A 200gig drive bought today would most certainly be faster than a 20gig drive bought 3 years ago.

Anyway...Couldnt you just partition the drive to be only 20gigs and then only format that partition?
 
i asked the same question over a week ago, they are deffo some circurlating because i've seen some server specs with 20gig sata drives, although seem to be very rare and might just be custom productions, can't say....go with the 36GB WD Raptor, its very fast i have 2 of them in my server
 
20 GB EXISTS PEOPLE

people there are 20 gb sata's around
it are ssd(solid state disks) :santa:
come on do you watch tv about computers or
search the internet
or crack open a xbox 360 hdd case and there you go:bang head:
:screwy:
 
Yup if you want a quick erase HDD.... SSD period. You could get one thats 500Gigs and it will erase quicker then any 20Gig drive. No need for multiple passes either.

Otherwise if your doing such a low level format on drives so small, you might consider just setting up a system that handles formatting drives if its a real issue.

Bigger the drive's platter size the faster it will be as well. Surely a 330-500Gig platter will be quicker then the 20Gig platter size you have, and might take jsut as long for a format.
 
Even after a single overwrite it's not possible to restore data.
But if you want to be really sure, use truecrypt when using the disk. That way nothing actually on disk is ever recoverable.
 
Why are we ressing a thread from back in 2005? This thread is very very old.
 
LOL Man didn't even realize this. Finally was caught by old thread res.
 
I know I didn't but didn't even know it was a res thread, typically I at least look at dates.
 
LowDog said:
Why do you think manufacturers don't produce 20 GB SATA drives? The best I can find is a 40 GB drive and I only managed to find one with that capacity. Most of the others are 80 GB +.

I like to wipe my drives periodically and anything over 20 GB takes quite a while for 7 passes or more. I'm just curious as to why there aren't any of these around (are they around?).

I can't be the only one that would like to have one. I'm lucky if I even use 5 GB worth. I suppose it'd be great if I found some software that would only wipe sections of the drive that it knows data is actually on. But even so, I'd like to have a 20 GB SATA drive.
Click to expand...

If you can still find 20 gig IDE drives, you could use an IDE to SATA converter.

I have a bunch of these and they work very well...
 
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