How to wipe large drive over 3TB?

[lopoetve]

“Clean” nukes the partitions. “Clean All” zeros the selected drive.

Did that change between versions of windows? Because looking at the storage arrays here, it's not zeroing it on SSDs at least - or the array isn't seeing the commands from a VM.

 

[Nobu]

Did that change between versions of windows? Because looking at the storage arrays here, it's not zeroing it on SSDs at least - or the array isn't seeing the commands from a VM.

Flash storage is a bit special. I'm not sure if it is supposed to write zeros, but even if it is, some flash controllers won't zero because it wastes writes. Data is often compressed and/or spread out on a ssd, though, so I'm not sure zeroing it would be useful anyway.

 

[sinisterDei]

or the array isn't seeing the commands from a VM.

This may be part of it as well. Some storage arrays that operate in a 'hardware accelerated' mode can handle some operations independent of the VM/hypervisor. For example, when you thick provision a large volume in ESX on a VAAI supporting SAN/NAS device, ESX tells the device "Make a 500GB chunk of space for me!" and then the SAN/NAS does it on its own, rather than requiring the ESX server itself manage the process of which bits on the datastore get allocated and formatted properly, etc. It is possible that functionality might extend to something like "Write zeros to this 500GB disk" and then the SAN says "OK I'll do that" and reports back to the hypervisor/VM that the command is complete, even though it is still processing locally in the SAN/NAS array.

 

[SvenBent]

The point of my posts are just to save people wasting their time (considerable on a 4TB drive) and energy on old IT wives tech tales. That's all.

You know I bet if I said "Don't slam your nuts in a refrigerator door because it won't do them any good!" Several would still come out with posts recommending why they should do it or doubting the wisdom of my post.

But again it is not old wives tales

You keep pushing an invalid point that there is no logic to do above 1 layers but in the real world there is
It is not optimal for op, but that does not make the logic itself invalid.

Had you just limited y this answesr to point to the waste part you would be correct for OP. But then you had to go on and made a judgemnt on the logic itself, (Wivestales) which is incorrect.
aka you didnt have 1 point. You made 2 by the wording you used and one of them is wrong.

 

[sinisterDei]

it is not old wives tales

in the real world there is

Not that it's particularly relevant to the question here, but I think you're splitting hairs a bit.

The idea that data has ever been recovered from a zero'd drive *is* an old wives tale. The idea that it is theoretically possible to recover some data from a zero'd drive is not a wives tale; it's been shown to be possible to determine the previous state of a zero'd bit with greater than 50% success rate. However, the idea that it has actually happened to real data on a real drive from the real world *is* a wives tale; as far as anyone is aware, it's never been done in real life with real data. Somehow I doubt your average eBay'd 3TB hard drive is going to be where that process is successfully used for the very first time.

 

[SvenBent]

Not that it's particularly relevant to the question here, but I think you're splitting hairs a bit.

The idea that data has ever been recovered from a zero'd drive *is* an old wives tale. The idea that it is theoretically possible to recover some data from a zero'd drive is not a wives tale; it's been shown to be possible to determine the previous state of a zero'd bit with greater than 50% success rate. However, the idea that it has actually happened to real data on a real drive from the real world *is* a wives tale; as far as anyone is aware, it's never been done in real life with real data. Somehow I doubt your average eBay'd 3TB hard drive is going to be where that process is successfully used for the very first time.

Correct I tottally agree
But the statements what not what ever it had been done or not. The statesmen was based on the purpose of using more than one wipe was needed.
and that is NOT old wives tales becuase security is going forward not backwards.
We don't build encryption to be unbreakable in 1960. We build it to be unbreakable in 2060. Security is forward looking
So the fact that there is evidence of a possible in the future, it make a good claim and sanity to be using wipe method with more then one wipe ,for certain cases

Does op need to worry about. Probably not for his case. but that does not mean nobody should care about a future threat model.

The issue was the the original statemen was ultimate and not selective
To say "Once again you only have to do one write over on a modern HDD from the past 25 years" is flawed by todays knowledge.
Had it simple been "A home user dont really need more then one wipe" now its selective and not ultmative and the saying would be correct,

Unless the "you" was the singular "you" for the OP and not undefined group "you". Gotta love English on that part. I always hated the multi meaning of "you" in enligsh

 

[sinisterDei]

Unless the "you" was the singular "you" for the OP and not undefined group "you"

I think for the purposes of this conversation, "you" referring to anyone that is a getting their information from HardForum might be still be true.

 

[likeman]

what am i reading here.... (think this topic might need to be locked soon)

use secure erase and job done (might not be simple to do depending on your PC) or just fill the drive which is what i normally do

if its a SSD just quick format it open Defrag and press optimize on the SSD and that's it as it TRIMs the whole drive, in about 30 seconds to 2-3 minutes later the background GC will have processed the TRIM to zero out the drive

for a HDD well bit more work/time is needed below

H2testw is a good one as one it writes the whole disk with 1GB hashed files and because it writes to the whole disk it will flush out any bad parts and it verifies as well that everything was stored correctly

delete all partitions (diskpart clean command is best option below) and then format the disk as NTFS (or exFAT as that provides more free space to Write to)
h2testw the drive (check smart before and after to make sure no relocation events or uncorrected errors has happened, up to you what you do with the drive if it has got problems)

once all is good don't just delete the partitions, just reset the drive , run diskpart and select the correct disk and clean it

diskpart , list disk , select disk x , clean ( >> warning this command does not ask when you do the clean command it just does it, so make sure you have selected the correct disk << )
this makes sure MBR and GPT is removed so does not cause bother with new owner

 

[BinarySynapse]

what am i reading here.... (think this topic might need to be locked soon)

use secure erase and job done (might not be simple to do depending on your PC) or just fill the drive which is what i normally do

if its a SSD just quick format it open Defrag and press optimize on the SSD and that's it as it TRIMs the whole drive, in about 30 seconds to 2-3 minutes later the background GC will have processed the TRIM to zero out the drive

for a HDD well bit more work/time is needed below

H2testw is a good one as one it writes the whole disk with 1GB hashed files and because it writes to the whole disk it will flush out any bad parts and it verifies as well that everything was stored correctly

delete all partitions (diskpart clean command is best option below) and then format the disk as NTFS (or exFAT as that provides more free space to Write to)
h2testw the drive (check smart before and after to make sure no relocation events or uncorrected errors has happened, up to you what you do with the drive if it has got problems)

once all is good don't just delete the partitions, just reset the drive , run diskpart and select the correct disk and clean it

diskpart , list disk , select disk x , clean ( >> warning this command does not ask when you do the clean command it just does it, so make sure you have selected the correct disk << )
this makes sure MBR and GPT is removed so does not cause bother with new owner

Or you can just do diskpart clean all as was already suggested.

 

[likeman]

i like to verify if its a HDD (doubles the time as it writes and reads but makes sure the whole disk working fine)

but yes clean all works as well, just don't use "clean all" on a SSD i had to restart the computer just so vds stopped Writing to it

 

[daglesj]

Not that it's particularly relevant to the question here, but I think you're splitting hairs a bit.

The idea that data has ever been recovered from a zero'd drive *is* an old wives tale. The idea that it is theoretically possible to recover some data from a zero'd drive is not a wives tale; it's been shown to be possible to determine the previous state of a zero'd bit with greater than 50% success rate. However, the idea that it has actually happened to real data on a real drive from the real world *is* a wives tale; as far as anyone is aware, it's never been done in real life with real data. Somehow I doubt your average eBay'd 3TB hard drive is going to be where that process is successfully used for the very first time.

Hence the caveat of my signature.