how to properly delete only existing data on a HDD? (selling a 12TB HDD)

[Deleted member 193596]

so i have to ship a 12TB HDD tomorrow and it would take over 28 hours to fully wipe the HDD (filling with 0s)
is there a tool that only wipes existing data instead of the whole platter?

 

[Bill_Bright]

Do a full (not "Quick") format on it. It is not the same as a "wipe" but it will keep an honest person honest.

Did you try CCleaner's Drive Wiper feature? It lets you select the number of passes so selecting "Simple Overwrite (1 pass)" is pretty quick compared to multiple passes.

Other wise, I am not aware of any tool that lets you wipe existing data only. Frankly, that really does not sound very safe to me anyway.

 

[Deleted member 193596]

Do a full (not "Quick") format on it. It is not the same as a "wipe" but it will keep an honest person honest.

Did you try CCleaner's Drive Wiper feature? It lets you select the number of passes so selecting "Simple Overwrite (1 pass)" is pretty quick compared to multiple passes.

Other wise, I am not aware of any tool that lets you wipe existing data only. Frankly, that really does not sound very safe to me anyway.

it's not like that i have bank account data on that drive but some private photos (family)

the CCleaner 1 Pass overwrite takes around 21 Hours for 12TB.
still too long since it is already Midnight here. (in 30 minutes...)


and the reason why i said "Only existing data" is because it wasn't even a TB of Data on it.

 

[OneMoar]

filling with zeros starts at the beginning of the drive so if its run for a few hours that should be sufficient
really so long as you nuke the gpt\mft the odds of recovery go way down..

option two is to encrypt the drive then format it again by using the disk-part and its clean command

really I don't think you need todo anything beyond a simple full format

 

[Bill_Bright]

and the reason why i said "Only existing data" is because it wasn't even a TB of Data on it.

I figured something like that but as I said, I don't see how that would work. Remember, when you erase or delete a file, it isn't really deleted - those storage locations are simply marked as available and the data can still be recovered with most any undelete or file recovery program.

If you know the person you are sending it too and trust they are not going to intentionally start snooping around, then even a simple quick erase will be enough to keep someone from stumbling on anything. And as soon as they start using the drive, chances of any recovery will quickly go down. If you think they might be the nosy type, then go with a full format. With it being a 12TB, it will still take a few hours.

In the meantime, if you open a command prompt and go to the root of the drive, and enter del *.* /s, that will (should) delete all your files in all subdirectories too.

 

[Deleted member 193596]

I figured something like that but as I said, I don't see how that would work. Remember, when you erase or delete a file, it isn't really deleted - those storage locations are simply marked as available and the data can still be recovered with most any undelete or file recovery program.

If you know the person you are sending it too and trust they are not going to intentionally start snooping around, then even a simple quick erase will be enough to keep someone from stumbling on anything. And as soon as they start using the drive, chances of any recovery will quickly go down. If you think they might be the nosy type, then go with a full format. With it being a 12TB, it will still take a few hours.

In the meantime, if you open a command prompt and go to the root of the drive, and enter del *.* /s, that will (should) delete all your files in all subdirectories too.

i'll try that.

 

[DrCR]

Boot from a Linux live CD/USB.

Do an fdisk -l to find the hard drive name e.g. /dev/sda
$fdisk -l

Then zero out the drive using the dd command. *If you have more than one hard drive in the computer, be sure to not wipe the wrong one.*
$dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=8MB

That will zero out the drive for you.

 

[Selaya]

OP already said they're on full MacArthur mode (too late), so your solutions of doing a full drive rewrite are invalid, it'll take about a day give or take to fully zero out the 12TB in its entirety.

I believe something like this may work: https://eraser.heidi.ie/
Iirc, it is capable of selectively overwriting LBAs (ie: the used ones), instead of doing a full wipe.

Obviously, the best idea would've been thinking of this problem earlier, but that's spilled milk.

 

[bobbybluz]

Eraser works great. I've been using if for nearly 20 years. I know from experience programs like Recuva don't work on things Eraser removed.