I have a few hard drives, laptop and desktop IDE, which I would like to Secure Erase. I'm aware that other methods exist for removing the data, but this is the safest and most efficient, and it's the one I want to use.
Other than hooking them up to an old desktop (I only have a laptop) how can I manage this?
In man hdparm it says
hdparm provides a command line interface to various kernel interfaces supported by the Linux SATA/PATA/SAS "libata" subsystem and the older IDE driver subsystem. Many newer (2008 and later) USB drive enclosures now also support "SAT" (SCSI-ATA Command Translation) and therefore may also work with hdparm.
However, I bought one which is support to support SAT, and reflected on the word 'may'. This was ii337 Gembird AUSI01.1
Edit: Initially I intended to destroy the drives after erasing them. I didn't realise that there might actually be people who would want old drives as they're quite ubiquitous. Of course that's how things become rare; people assume nobody wants them. I'll give some consideration to selling them or donating them to someone who wants them.
Of course, this makes Secure Erase all the more necessary. Things like writing zeroes to the whole drive will be effective, but will reduce the life of the drive, and take much longer.