Fastest drive zero'ing utility?

R

Robert P

Member
I've been trying out zero'ing a hard drive, wondering what the fastest utility for this is. The first one I tried is Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool but that was going molasses slow, like 1.6 megs/sec. I tried Dban which proved to be faster. About 6+ hours on a 320gb WD drive using the Autonuke setting.

Wondering if there's one that's appreciably faster. Free is always good but I'd be willing to pay for one too.

From what I've read, zero'ing a drive is often referred to as a low level format but isn't a true low level format that supposedly can only be done by the manufacturer. Wondering what the difference is.

Thanks.
 
FORMAT and ERASE (zeroing) are 2 different things.
Format usually just empties the partition and prepares it for use.
While erase (zeroing) writes zeros on each sector on the HDD plate(s) and that is the reason why it takes a lot longer than a format.

But anyway you can try DBAN utility and KILL DISK utility.KILL DISK has DOS version and WINDOWS version by the way so choose the one you like more.
They are both very good and free.
 
Formatting resets all bits to 0, so it sounds synonymous ('Quick Format' simply dumps the file table). You could use really any 'full' format tool. You could use DBAN with a single pass for the fastest wipe of all bits. Alternatively you could quick format the drive and then just fill it with your own garbage data.

Autonuke takes forever since it's overwriting your data with a bunch of other garbage on multiple passes.
 
beers said:
Formatting resets all bits to 0
Click to expand...
That's not what a normal format such as what you do from the disk manager does. After such a format any files that aren't on overwritten areas are still accessible using the right software such as GetDataBack.
 
If you want fast zeroing then use ONE PASS ZEROS method in KILL DISK.
It will write zeros to all your HDD sectors just one time and that's it.
But HOW FAST it will be REALLY depends on the number of your HDD sectors plus on tons of other things.

There is no software which can zero your entire drive in just few seconds/minutes especially if the HDD is like 320 GB or 500 GB or even more.
Each drive has TONS of sectors especially those big ones.
 
Also keep in mind the performance of the drive and capacity will determine how long it takes.

IE ~300 GiB @ 100 MB/sec:
300 * 1024 (MiB) / 100 (MB/sec) / 60 (mins) = ~51 mins.
 
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