Some questions n ideas

OK. That's good, than you will have a safe zero tool. Mine works fine and is more userfriendly than the DBAN-CD. One day you might need it and it's hard to create this CD, if your harddisk has damaged partitions. LOL.

 

Then you zeroing the disk flying also i guess,at the time i messed with partitions to the point everything failed to recover, zeroing the disk took 8 hr !

 

The time a "wipe" takes surely differs depending on your disk size also no doubt. 8 hours for me does seem extreme for a single pass ZEROING, but then maybe some tools might be designed to go at it differently then others.

Everyone's technique however, differs to a degree. I like many others, simply experimented. At first, on cleaning ANY drive platter disk i used to blindly just "wipe" with any freeware then install via CD as anyone. It always took some time for the install to fully complete. I use XP Pro.

Reading up does has it's rewards. So does sharing experiences be they good or bad.

I found later after going over some posts here that zeroing was a favorable choice for obvious reasons, but then again i begin to experiment since some utilities i used offered several different passing methods. Most of us i'm sure opt for the "quick" factor so we can get along with things sooner than later.

Recently, at least for me, from Seagate to Maxtor or SamSung hard drives, i decided to scramble methods, that is first use RANDOM passes (either 1 or more) followed lastly by ZEROES (either 1 (usually) or more). After such wipings upon inserting the CD install disk i noticed a marked increase in speed and less time for the complete install. For me, even a savings of 5 minutes or less i consider a huge benefit, although the time savings i discovered have been more depending on the drive and how much was left on it.

I'm no expert in this field by any stretch, but from hands-on experience thru simple observations, even deleting a system partition b 4 wipe still leaves enough scraps that the Read/Write heads seem to have to stumble over them and that is a delay thats very noticable to me on a reinstall.

It also makes sense that a wiped with ZEROES hard disk, is refreshed enough to a degree that it does maximize the efficiency of the reinstall and makes for less friction to hesitate on. Just an uneducated assumption of mine but still a reality i discovered nonetheless that i now enjoy.

EASTER

 

Guys have u tried combination of FD n ShadowUSer ?

IF m not wrong , freezing snapshot makes the new freeze snapshot and works on it. So we r wasting valuable C:\ space ?

I dont have given it a try , just wondering how effective that will be ?

 

Erik is it the Data Diagnostic disk? http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=3&swid=30

 

Was it sue to raid drivers specifically?
What if u did not have BING?

 

I downloaded my WD Zero Tool from this link.
http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=1&swid=30
I downloaded this file Diag504cCD.iso.
I use it on this type of harddisk :
WD Raptor WD740GD HDD 74gb 10000rpm SATA 8mb Cache 4.5ms

In the left column of the link I choosed :
"Serial ATA WD Raptor - 10,000 RPM"

In the right column of the link I choosed :
"Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS (CD)"

At the bottom you can see the files for downloading.

I hope this helps.

 

Thanks Peter.

 

Thanks Erik..

 

Likewise Erik, thanks for the link.


These hard drive tools are beneficial & valuable assets when dealing with your drives. I'm still experimenting to arrive at the closest to Perfect wipe of a HD platter as humanly & machinely as possible.

Theres no doubt from my experiences that a really well-efficiently wiped drive with the right tools not only speeds up an install but you're less likely to run into problems anytime soon afterwards and AFAIK prolongs the life of a hard drive.

I been getting the scraps. Shops that either consider the used HD as outdated or caused too many problems from lets say a severe virus attack. I can take those destined for the scrap heap drives and remaster them strickly from software Hard Drive tools and they perform excellent.

 

At the SWI-forums, they recommended me these wipe/zero tools, because they seem to be stronger than the format of Windows, when you install Windows.
There seem to be existing infections, that can survive a Windows format. I don't know if that story is true, after all I'm not a tech, just an average user.
Nevertheless, I feel more comfortable to zero my harddisk, before I install from scratch or restore a clean image and certainly after a destructive attack like killdisk and similar infections.
I know for sure, that I'm not the only one. Acronis has members, who do the same thing.

Acronis True Image is easy, to restore an image over a zeroed harddisk, that 's because ATI allows you to restore the complete disk, while ShadowProtect restores partition per partition.
With ShadowProtect you have to do something extra first, before you can restore the image, but it's all very logical, at least I didn't have a problem to find what to do.

Darik's Boot and Nuke (freeware) seems to be a general wipe tool and has more ways to wipe your harddisk.

 

Thanks. That wiper is been around since my forst discovery of ERASER which by the way revolutionized the way i handle simple deletions. I don't let $M get it's grubby code on any of my deletions because their still there, minus a single letter removal, and the machine still regards them as data which consumes space and requires Read/Write Heads to spend time reviewing them on passes from other programs even though we were led to believe they were to become dismissed from the disc.

Since i have to reformat today courtesy PCTools ThreatFire lousy code they bungled the old CyberHawk with, i thank you for that generous suggestion.

Today, Dban will get a working project to clean up.

 

Hi Easter, take a seat and be patient,wiping toke over 8 hours on my disk with this stuff.

 

Thanks

I have a new modularized tower that stands a mere 14 inches tall. The aggravation is that i have to forcefully pull the side panels to get to the drives, and that alone will consume some time, let alone the wipe itself.

But, we live and learn. I will never try another product again that changes hands which then proceeds to recode it so terrible that it renders your system a total waste.

But forsight is the better part of valor, and so i plan ahead anymore, hence i tested it on a mere 8.4 Gb drive (ha ha). Should take no time at all plus this go round i'm going to use Erik's suggestion of DBAN.

 

I wont scare you off but i used Dban !

 

My Western Digital ZERO tool takes 20 minuts for a full zeroing of one harddisk (80gb).
The quick zeroing only takes a few minuts.

I have no practical experience with DBAN, because I didn't need it yet.
I might use it for my Seagate external harddisk.

 

The test drive i'll be wiping is Western Digital. I'm going to run several passes of many methods finishing with Full Zeroing of it. What i do is use PARAGON to format after wiping because i read where Windows format tool is not as good and my results definitely bear that out. Windows format install goes slow whereas a PARAGON format loads files at a dizzying clip and makes the reinstall take only a few short minutes.

 

So i am curious how long it will take on your Seagate with DBAN.

 

That can be a long time. I only have DBAN ready, because I can't use my WD Zero Tool to wipe my Seagate external harddisk.
I have no good reason to wipe my external harddisk at this moment.
If my memory is still good, I remember that DBAN has an option to zero my harddisk, which is supposed the quickest method.
If I would use the crazy Gutmann method than it will take probably days to wipe 160gb.