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Old January 14th 19, 08:35 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Grant Taylor
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Posts: 14
Default Fast way to wipe an external HDD?

On 1/13/19 10:28 AM, Kirk Bubul wrote:
Question: Is here a good free wipe program that would wipe these external
drives in less than a workday? Once wiped, I will throw these old drives
away unless someone speaks up and will pay for the shipping charges to
get them from me to them.

Thanks in advance for your help.


I think there are some utilities that can give the drive a command to
write zeros (or otherwise) erase itself. Hopefully you can give the
drive the command and then otherwise ignore it for a while and then
check it's status later. The key being the drive does the erasing, not
your computer over the slower USB 2.0 interface.

It's not DoD grade erasure (I digress), but it will prevent casual users
from accessing the data.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die