Why Format?
Do you need to simply format the drive to reuse it, or do you need to securely wipe the drive to dispose of it?
If you are reusing the drive internally, then a quick format is all you probably need.
If you need to securely wipe the drive then, yes, it is a slow process. The other approach is to simply take a hammer to the drive and smash it so it physically is broken and unrecoverable.
What formatting tool?
There are a ton of utilities to wipe drives, such as
- I have not used this software
- I have not used this software
- Use this tool if you attach the drive as a USB docked external drive
- Utilize ISO boot
ISO Boot Solutions
Use the UBCD, it contains all disk utilities, Dban, and other disk tools http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Format Methods
DOD
DOd short
Ops2
Guttman
Prng
Quick
Choosing DOD
DOD means that it will take several runs writing random values on each sector so the fact that it takes so long is absolutely normal. It took overnight to perform the wipe.
Is the manufacture specific software a lot faster?
Do the Manufacturer format software come with ultimate boot CD?
No you need to write all sectors on the disk a few times….
with all 0, with all 1, with 0101010, with 10101010 and a random pattern.
This is so all magnetism just besides the tracks gate sufficiently masked by the data.
By just writing 0 (which is done by “regular” formatting tools) some special firmware can read the edges of tracks to retrieve the previous data.
Wipe your Computer’s Data Summary
In the future, you should encrypt your disks so that all you have to do is delete the partition and create a new encrypted partition.
With encrypted disks wipe the first 1MB of all partitions then the keys (or the material to find them are lost as well).
