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I'm running Cygwin on Windows 7 and have done for several years now. I use kou1okada's brilliant fork of apt-cyg to install packages from the Cygwin repository, and up until now this has suited me fine. However I recently discovered that hdparm wasn't available at all from the Cywygin repository, and this is confirmed both by running apt-cyg install hdparm and by using the Cygwin installer.

This is surprising to me considering how popular a tool hdparm is, and the fact that it is, to my knowledge, the only CLI tool that can be used to trigger the ATA Secure Erase, Enhanced Secure Erase and Block Erase firmware commands on modern hard drives, which are generally considered the safest and most secure methods to wipe modern SSDs.

Confusingly, looking on the Cygwin website seems seems to show the package as existing, but "obsolete" for some unknown reason. Why would such a popular tool be obsolete, and is there any way I can get use it on Cygwin without compiling it from source?

If there isn't a way, are there any alternatives available on Cygwin that can also be used to issue ATA firmware commands to SSDs?

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  • When on Windows software has a totally different way to access what hdparm uses for major parts of it's magic? -> so, not easily ported -> therefore reported as obsolete. Maybe. This might be true for a (major?) portion of the code.
    – Hannu
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 20:17
  • But what's so unique about hdparm compared to fdisk, smartctl, df, du and the like? All of the latter examples are in the Cygwin repository, usable on my system, and get regular updates.
    – Hashim Aziz
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 20:20
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    IIRC it makes use of the SG_IO ioctl in the Linux kernel
    – Tom Yan
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 20:24
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    I am only guessing. Now, have you actually tried fdisk and smartctl? I'm quite confident that the cygwin mailing list or even their FAQ might have the actual answer for you. One more possible reason; there was a version of hdparm, but no-one maintains it -> obsolete. (A human has to make sure it compiles and works as intended, ;-)
    – Hannu
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 20:25
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    From the cygwin mailing list (06/08/2013): "I decided to no longer maintain grub and hdparm. Upstream grub can no longer be built on Cygwin. Meantime I added support for some use cases of hdparm (AAM, APM, write cache, read lookahead, standby timer, security freeze) to smartctl." posted by Christian Franke, the maintainer of hdparm.
    – DavidPostill ♦
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 21:26

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Thanks to David Postill for looking into the Cygwin mailing lists to find this 2013 exchange between Corinna Vinschen, the current lead and then-co-lead of the Cygwin project, and Christian Franke, the former maintainer of Cygwin's hdparm port.

Corinna Vinschen wrote:

Please guys, be so kind as to reply to this mail, so we can check if [these] packages are orphaned, or if you are just busy.

...

Christian Franke:

  • cdrkit
  • ddrescue
  • grub
  • hdparm
  • isomaster
  • ncdu

Christian Franke's response confirms that he had stopped maintaining the hdparm port, while integrating some features from it into smartctl:

Christian Franke wrote:

ddrescue: RFU pending :-) cdrkit, isomaster, ncdu: Coming soon.

I decided to no longer maintain grub and hdparm. Upstream grub can no longer be built on Cygwin.

Meantime I added support for some use cases of hdparm (AAM, APM, write cache, read lookahead, standby timer, security freeze) to smartctl.

Christian

In short: Cygwin's port of the hdparm utility, crucial as it is for securely erasing modern SATA and SAS hard drives, hasn't been maintained since 2013.

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