Back in May 2010, we did a hands-on review of the Aleratec 1:1 HDD Cruiser which enabled you to duplicate a hard drive or securely erase one without the need for a computer. There is an updated firmware available that delivers additional secure erasure functionality.
What is the Aleratec 1:1 HDD Cruiser?
According to Aleratec:
The Aleratec 1:1 HDD Cruiser duplicates hard disk drives without a computer: an essential tool for installing new or upgrading multiple computer systems. It can also decommission computer systems by reliably wiping all the data from up to 2 hard drives at a time with Secure Erase, a powerful and efficient NIST 800-88 accepted form of sanitization that is up to 90% faster than traditional overwrite methods. As a backup, the unit continues to offer a choice of three comprehensive overwrite algorithms: a one-pass wipe, a three-pass wipe with verify, or a powerful seven-pass wipe as recommended by the Department of Defense 5220.22-M specification. Proper hard disk drive sanitization eliminates the risk of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands and is an essential part of compliance for FACTA, GLB, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and other federal and state regulations.
The 1:1 HDD Cruiser’s drive bays are equipped with quick and easy loading doors. Simply open the drive bay door to load or unload a drive. Slide the drive in the drive bay and close the drive bay door and high integrity electrical and data connections are made automatically. Each drive bay has Non Scratch SATA connectors designed for greater than 50,000 swap cycles to prevent any damage to your hard disk drives. The unit is compatible with 3.5” internal SATA I/II hard disk drives and can accommodate 2.5” internal SATA I/II hard disk drives with optional adapters (P/N 350106), sold separately.As an added bonus, the 1:1 HDD Cruiser has a USB 2.0 port so any hard drives loaded in the machine can be accessed by a PC.
My HDD Cruiser was still running the A.26H firmware so it was time to upgrade to the A.28H firmware in order to take advantage of the updated Secure Erasure functionality.
Visit the Aleratec WebsitePreparing the Firmware Update
In order to update the firmware, you need to use a hard drive and the updated firmware. You need to create an 8MB FAT partition on the drive.
Once you have done that, just copy the firmware file to the drive and then remove the drive from your computer.
Insert the HDD into the source bay.
Press and hold the ESC key for 3 seconds until you see Adv.Setup.
If the screen just reads Adv.Setup, then press ENT, otherwise skip to the next step.
Use the arrow keys to scroll through the Adv.Setup menu to the Update Firmware option.
Press the ENT key, then press a second time to confirm the update.
Once the update is complete, restart the duplicator. (Note: Do not power down the duplicator during the update process.)
To verify the firmware has been updated, do the following:
Scroll to the Setup option and press ENT.
Scroll to the System Info option and press ENT.
Verify the updated firmware version.
Power down the duplicator and remove the source HDD.
And that is it – so would you like to see that in action?
The Video Walkthrough of Updating the Firmware
Here is a video walkthrough of the firmware updating process to show you just how simple it is.
The whole process only takes a few moments.
Performing a Secure Erasure
Ok, so now the firmware is updated, why not perform a secure erasure? I figured I would just use the hard drive I had used for the firmware update as it was already in the drive bay.
The drive is a 200GB drive, in case you were wondering.
The video isn’t very exciting, but I wanted to show that a 200GB drive can be securely erased in a little over an hour.
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