Abstract
The vibration induced by cooling fans makes PES (Position Error Signal) greater than Write Fault Threshold (WFT) regularly; when PES > WFT, the write operation stops, which makes HDD (Hard Disk Drive) write data throughput drop significantly. WFT is used to protect the erasure of the adjacent tracks. Normally, WFT is around 10% of TP (Track Pitch). However, whether adjacent tracks can be read back or not becomes irrelevant when executing the Secure Erase command to overwrite the entire media. Setting WFT to higher value such as 20% does not affect anything. In this paper, increasing WFT value, e.g. to 20% to avoid PES >WFT during executing Secure Erase command is proposed, which will shorten the time to overwrite the media significantly. When HDD receives this new overwrite command, HDD FW will switch WFT to a predetermined high value, e.g. 20%, then execute the overwrite operation as usual. HDD Firmware switches WFT to original WFT after completing the overwrite operation. The proposed method/command makes Seagate HDD more attractive. The HDD industry will benefit in terms of HDD reuse and recycling if all HDD manufacturers adopt this method.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Liu, Xiong and Xie, Wenxiang, "Accelerate HDD Secure Erase in JBOD", Technical Disclosure Commons, (July 21, 2025)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/8378