Erasing a seconary drive in windows

[elilio]

I'm about to start erasing a secondary drive on my windows PC. I have 2x 1TB hdds on my pc. The one i need to erase is not the one I boot from, just used to store movies and etc. Is it possible to do this while still using the computer from the first drive? If so, I need it to securely erase, as in not recoverable by forensics or anything as this hard drive was used as my only hard drive until I got a new one and contains SSNs, CCs, my old windows installation, and etc. Should I go with the 35 pass? How long will that take on a 1 TB drive? If there's anything else I should know just let me know.

Thanks in advanced!

 

[DavidHB]

Re: Erasing a secondary drive in windows

If your machine is sufficiently powerful, you can use it on one drive while erasing the other. The free space wipe will, however, go best if you leave the machine alone while it is running, and also disable or pause your antivirus for the run, to save on resources and prevent drive 'churn'.

You will need to delete (or, better, erase) all the files on the drive. If the files are very large, set the erasure method to a single or 3 pass method, rather than the default Gutmann, to save time.Then do a quick format to get rid of any inaccessible Windows System files; there will probably be a System Volume Information folder for example. Then do a free space wipe, which, on an empty drive, will wipe the whole drive.

Hope this helps.

David

 

[Joel]

If you've not already done the wipe, there will be a new beta feature in the 6.2 builds (normal beta warnings apply) to erase a partition or drive (I'll be implementing it next.) I can't give a time frame in which it'll be complete, but I'd say soon.