Secure erase how long does it take

Wiki has some guidance on this. Notice how old some of the work on it was done and since then data density has gone up of the platters by x times making it that much more difficult to try to read any data.

I took the drive out of the computer and put it in a USB 2. Each drive erase using the 3-pass method took 17 hours to complete on one hard drive. Bill , it was years ago, back in the 90's, but I used a program from Norton Utilities to "unformat" a drive that I had formatted the old fashioned long way in MS-DOS6. The format had written all 0's to the drive and set up a new FAT table.

I tried the same thing on a drive I'd formatted 3 times in a row without success. If you're disposing of the drives it'd be faster to take a drill press to them.

I don't know how big the batches are that you're referring to, but expect hours per drive for DoD wiping and days of doing this in the background if you have more than drives. Drilling also addresses drives that no longer work properly electronically. If you drill them, make sure to do it where only the platters are. They're often glass, so they just shatter inside the container when drilled.

Stay away from the area where you'd find the magnets and voice coil to move drive heads. I hit a neodymium magnet once and tried to drill through but they're extremely unfriendly to bits. EDIT: Just saw your comment about donating to charity. Don't know how valuable these spinning media are in the size you have. The DOD 3-pass standard was created 25 years ago, used for a few years, then abandoned. I think your memory is incomplete. It would only be able to fully recover a formatted disk if the disk had been prepared by the MIRROR command, which would create copies the FAT, boot sector, and other metadata in a safe location on the disk.

If formatted, the Unformat command could use this stored metadata to return the disk to its previous state. I've seen SSD chips that have been "securely erased" pulled from the board and had data recovered with a simple chip reader available on Amazon. The only sure-fire way I've found to prevent data from being recovered by someone outside your org is to either reformat and reuse it in-house or crack them open and destroy the chips with a drill or dremel tool and a metal cutting wheel.

To continue this discussion, please ask a new question. Get answers from your peers along with millions of IT pros who visit Spiceworks. I was just trying to find some kind of benchmark. As I was going to use an internal drive, I expected my secure erase to be faster. Yes it is.

From a. Jul 5, PM. Jul 5, PM in response to kingfisher In response to kingfisher Communities Get Support. Sign in Sign in Sign in corporate. Browse Search. Ask a question. Related Article How to reinstall macOS. User profile for user: kingfisher kingfisher How long will it take to erase the drive using Disk Utility's Most Secure option? More Less. Reply I have this question too I have this question too Me too Me too. Helpful answers Drop Down menu. Jul 3, PM in response to Tesserax In response to Tesserax I found one estimate, based on a test with a GB External Drive connected with Firewire , which took 18 hours 22 minutes for a 7-pass erase, yielding an estimate of 0.

At that rate, even three passes would take over 10 hours. I am leaning in favor of on pass at between three and four hours. Restart your Mac. Select Disk Utility.

Click on Continue. Click on View. Click on Show all Devices. Cornelio Izar De Fuente Explainer. How do I erase a flash drive?

Connect the USB drive to your computer. Right-click on them and select "Delete". Zilvinas Cotaina Explainer. How do you clean an external hard drive? Connect your external hard drive to your computer. Open your Disk Utility App. Select the drive you want to wipe clean just to be sure youdon't erase the wrong hard drive, disconnect any other externalhard drives and double-check that the correct drive isselected Click Erase.

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