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I've been tasked with wiping the data of a ton of hard drives. To wipe I use DBAN from a System Rescue CD. The tower I'm using has multiple SATA connectors. I can wipe one hard drive no problem but if I try to connect a second SATA hard drive only one appears in DBAN. I'm new at installing hard drives: I connected the SATA cable (at both ends) and plugged in the power supply connector. Did I forget something?

In the BIOS under "drive configuration" it has SATA PRIMARY DRIVE: HARD DRIVE SATA SECONDARY DRIVE: UNKNOWN PRIMARY MASTER DRIVE: UNKNOWN PRIMARY SLAVE DRIVE: UNKNOWN

The tower is a Dell OptiPlex GX270. The contents of the hard drive are unknown, could be Windows or Linux.

How can I wipe two hard drives at once?

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    Not an answer, but as a comment, have you considered a hardware wiper? There are some running around $150 or so, but they are largely unattended, way less heat/electricity, smaller space... Just plug the drive in and press a button.
    – Blackbeagle
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 22:17
  • @Blackbeagle I'll suggest it but management is very bureaucratic
    – Celeritas
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 22:22
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    You might also consider an inexpensive USB to IDE/SATA drive connector. You would be able to leave the OS up and running, and connect/disconnect drives without restarting the system. You can get one for less than $20 US. And, you can use as many as you have USB ports. Connect drive to adapter, connect to USB, wipe drive, connect another drive to another adapter while it is going on, connect to another USB, etc...
    – Bon Gart
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 22:53
  • @Celeritas - tell me about bureaucracy. We do medical software. They REFUSE to recycle any computers - all equipment must be destroyed even if the hard drives are removed. We begged to be able to donate the computers - some fairly decent - nope. The hard drives have to be sent to a certified destruction facility and we have to pay for that. Everytime we brought the subject up, they said "HIPAA" and shut us down. Knee jerk reaction without thought.
    – Blackbeagle
    Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 6:59
  • it has SATA PRIMARY DRIVE: HARD DRIVE SATA SECONDARY DRIVE: UNKNOWN PRIMARY MASTER DRIVE: UNKNOWN PRIMARY SLAVE DRIVE: UNKNOWN. I only see one SATA disk here, and two messages about PATA drives. That means that even the BIOS does not see the second drive.
    – Hennes
    Commented Mar 25, 2016 at 13:54

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