What you do when you want to secure erase your old 8tb HDD fast ?

I am trying to secure erase my 8tb drive but it will take too long. I am not choosing any high security algorithms just fill 0 but it seems will take very long time, any fast solution ?

William654 said:

I am trying to secure erase my 8tb drive but it will take too long. I am not choosing any high security algorithms just fill 0 but it seems will take very long time, any fast solution ?

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Nope.
Set up the comp to write zeros to the drive, then go to sleep.
It "may" be finished by morning.

If I recall... on an AMD FX-8350, it took about 1.5 hours to write zeros (one pass), to a 1TB internal drive.

It'll go a lot faster on a USB 3 dock than a USB 2 dock, but once you're using an interface faster than the drive can write, it takes however long it takes.

What if you can't overwrite it, though, like if it broke and you're sending it in for replacement? Not needing to overwrite it is one of the advantages to using FDE like Bitlocker.

If you are in a hurry you can try WD Data Life Guard QUICK ERASE.

WD Data life guard
QUICK ERASE writes zeros to the first and last million sectors of the drive
FULL ERASE writes zero to the entire drive

WD Data life guard diagnostics quick or full erase?

barreleye said:

It'll go a lot faster on a USB 3 dock than a USB 2 dock, but once you're using an interface faster than the drive can write, it takes however long it takes.

What if you can't overwrite it, though, like if it broke and you're sending it in for replacement? Not needing to overwrite it is one of the advantages to using FDE like Bitlocker.

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yes I am using USB 3.2 hub. If I turn on bitlocker it will be faster ?

Why bother unless worried about drives being stolen? Even then bitlocker would be more secure?

You wanna sell it?

There's no fast way to "securely erase/nuke" a HDD that big. That's just it - takes time to cover so many sectors - even if it's zeros all the way (which is WAY faster than so called military grade - data nuke :).

Yes ^^^

William654 said:

yes I am using USB 3.2 hub. If I turn on bitlocker it will be faster ?

Click to expand...

No. My point was that if the drive had been encrypted, you wouldn't need to erase it before parting with it. That said, I specifically brought up the scenario of being unable to erase a broken drive, and you were returning it for warranty replacement. It would also give you peace of mind if the drive were stolen. It's for these reasons I encrypt all my drives. However, you never know what the future holds, so if I were able to erase it, I would, but really, that's just my paranoia talking. I mean, who's going to put a drive in storage indefinitely waiting for a Bitlocker exploit? (Rhetorical question. I'm not trying to start a discussion of that.)