Over 200 minutes?

[hm2k]

Should it really take over 200 minutes to erase an 80GB SATA drive via USB?

It seems a long time, thus my questions are:

a) Why does it take so long?
b) Is there any way to make it quicker?

Thanks.

 

[Joel]

It takes a long time because all the free space on the disk has to be written to for the erase, this is probably compounded by the fact that you are using the drive by USB. Unfortunately there isn't any way to shorten the time required, unless you are not using a pseudorandom 1-pass erasure then set it so - the gains in security is unlikely to be offset by the time required.

Joel

 

[GregM]

b) Is there any way to make it quicker?

If your Paranoia Level is no higher than Medium, you can substantially shorten the time by unchecking 'cluster tips'.