Erase entire drive

E

ebarreda

New Member
The help info for Eraser suggests that to delete all the data in a drive
"the first thing to do is to delete all files" and then use eraser.

Since deleting a large number of files in a hard drive can take a long time. Wouldn't it be faster to just format the drive and then use Eraser to overwrite the entire drive?

Is there a disadvantage with that sequence of actions?

Thanks,

Eduardo
 
ebarreda said:
The help info for Eraser suggests that to delete all the data in a drive "the first thing to do is to delete all files" and then use eraser.
Click to expand...
Depends on what you mean by "all the data". To wipe data but not the OS, that would be true ... you don't want to format the drive. To wipe the entire drive, use DBAN.

EDIT: If you're referring to my suggestion in the thread re: Erasing an external hard drive, you're correct that formatting the disk is an option but I don't know if a full format would be faster than a single pass Erase of selected files and I think the latter is more secure. In either case, I think we agree that following up with a free space erase is advisable.
 
Thanks Glenn. I don't believe it is easy/possible to work on this drive booting from a floppy since it is in an external fibre attached array.

This is not an OS drive, it is a drive with user data already migrated somewhere else that is going to be retired.

Eduardo
 
Oops! We crossed paths ... it took me a while to realize what you probably meant and I was editing my earlier response at the same time you were replying.
 
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