beond format
- Thread starter justinups
- Start date
Zero filling is an older method of simply writing binary zeros to a hard drive. The old method was done by booting with floppy disk to run a small dos tool from that. Most drive manufacturers have their own drive tools for cleaning a drive much faster then the slow process zero filling entailed like 8hrs. for a 13gb drive. Newer tools like Eraser provided sourceforge.net work much faster when writing binary zeros repeatedly at a much faster pace.
It wipes things a little more throughly than formatting yes but why would you want to? A format (or even just deleting the files) is gone enough for just about everyone. Zeroing out your drive just takes more time, it's doesn't really make your data that much more gone.
PC eye is right as well, most manufacturers have a tool that can do it.
PC eye is right as well, most manufacturers have a tool that can do it.
A quick deletion of the partition on any drive will take of all files. Once the new partition is created and new files are seen those will continually overwrite the same sectors were the previous data was removed from. I certainly don't need to go back to the zero filling days again.
For Eraser if you need something to clean files off of a drive you can download that free at http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser/ This will zero out individual files instead of wiping an entire drive. For that a good reformat or deletion of a primary partition would see that done in far less time.
(if it took all day for a WD 13gb those years back I can imagine a week for a 500gb sata.
no thanks!)
For Eraser if you need something to clean files off of a drive you can download that free at http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser/ This will zero out individual files instead of wiping an entire drive. For that a good reformat or deletion of a primary partition would see that done in far less time.
(if it took all day for a WD 13gb those years back I can imagine a week for a 500gb sata.
no thanks!)
A full format will scan for and flag bad sectors and clean the data off good enough. It would still be findable by recovery software, but a zeroed drive also has recoverable data on it.
If the amount of bad sectors is growing then the drive is probably on it's last legs. You'll want to backup anything you need if that's the case.
If the amount of bad sectors is growing then the drive is probably on it's last legs. You'll want to backup anything you need if that's the case.
Tayl
VIP Member
I highly doubt that the company in which you purchased the HDD from is really going to sit there and recover all of your data from your HDD when you return it. I think your a little paranoid. Just completely wipe it and format it so that it's basically a storage HDD and send it back. They shouldn't really be going through peoples data anyway because it's against a privacy / data protection act isn't it?
Rove.
Rove.
Once the drive is tested at the factory and found with flaws they simply throw the metal platters into a bin for metal recycling. These companies may reburbish the drive or simply toss it and send out a replacement under their warranty as long as you never attempted to open the casing and void the factory seal on it. If you bought the drive recently it should be covered.