what is the fastest way to erase/wipe hard drive?

Question

I have a 1T usb 2.0 portable hard drive that I need to get rid of. I didn't know it's such a pain to get it wiped!

1. Tried Eraser, 1 pass(psuedorandom) by default took 18 hours.

2. Tried Western Digital's own software to wipe, took another 19 hours for 1 pass.

3. During the process, due to the bad contact of the USB connector(common problem with this disk), it interrupted so many times, so I had to restart the above process many times to finish them.

4. tried recovery software, took another 18 hours, and EVERYTING was able to be recovered!!!

I'm at a lost, at my wits' end. Please help me. How to get rid of this disk fast??? Should I just crash it with a hammer???

Solution 1

The disk wiping tools work by erasing all sectors on your hard drive so it takes a long time. Connect your portable hard drive to another USB port at the back of your computer case, and it may work a bit faster.

Another solution is to find a single large file (for example, a game setup file or a movie), paste it into your portable drive again and again until the drive is full. This will also overwrite all sectors of your disk.

Solution 2

The way I see it if the wipe didn't work then you can either take a hammer to it or take it to a local shredding or destruction service

Solution 3

It's a large drive, it's probably slow, and you apparently have a computer with faulty USB connectors.

The fastest and surest way to make the drive entirely unreadable and the data unrecoverable, even if the drive was fast and your computer had good USB connectors is to physically destroy the drive.

1 hammer, 1 hard surface, a few good whacks making sure the little chips inside the device are well and truly broken up, and you're good to go.

Solution 4

Being rather fond of strong magnets and in possession of tiny Torx drivers, I just disassemble drives and grab the magnets. Far more elegant than going at the drive with a hammer. Do be careful of your fingers. If you are concerned with the minor possibility of recovering data from the (now filthy) shiny aluminum platters, have at them with your hammer or sandpaper or tinsnips or toss them in a fire. Much faster than waiting for an over-write to complete.

If it's boring SSD it will still probably hammer better with the case off, but it's got no magnets worth bothering with, so you could just use a big hammer. Those are also generally more worth wiping and re-using.

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Comments

[Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style]

If it's a hard drive that has platters, then you need to damage those and not just the circuitry. Someone could technically take out the platters and mount those to get data off of them... Otherwise if physical destruction is not what you want, you can download and use sdelete. Just let the thing run and forget about it for a few days or however long it takes.

[Mike Lowery]

Try DBAN or run shred using a Linux boot disk like Knoppix.

[bwDraco]

Is physical destruction acceptable, or do you intend to reuse the drive? If it's the former, then I'd just smash the drive (be sure to use safety goggles).

[Ravindra Bawane]

Yes, it will overwrite, but the data will still be recoverable. Disk-wiping programs will nearly always run multiple passes of different types of data due to the ability of information to be recovered even a couple over-writes in.

[Durfee]

When copying tons of movie files to your drive, it will overwrite all sectors of your drive, no matter what type of data is originally stored. After overwriting, data recovery tools will be able to recover only the move files you used to overwrite.

[Ravindra Bawane]

The question is also "who am I trying to keep this from". If the people you're keeping it from have sufficient resources and desire, then one pass (what you get by writing once over the data) will be insufficient. If you're selling a computer with a hard drive, you should wipe it several times even if you're selling it to your buddy, because the cost of wiping is low, and the potential for catastrophic loss is high enough.

[RemarkLima]

Chips would only apply to SSDs right? Which should also support fast erase potentially? If it's a traditional Hard Drive, you'll need to make sure the silver disc(s) inside are destroyed - they look like a fat CD.