Backup Before It Breaks — and Wipe Before You Let Go
Recently, heise online revealed that numerous older Western Digital hard drives — particularly from the Blue, Red, and Purple series — may be on the brink of failure due to firmware vulnerabilities tied to Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology. SMR stacks data tracks like roof shingles, allowing greater capacity, but at a cost: the firmware must constantly track where each piece of data lives.