DBAN taking forever...is HDDErase better?

[brownstone]

Thanks for the info. I installed the latest chipset drivers and my main drive is now showing up as it should. My "problem drive" however, despite showing up in disk management does not show up under either IDE channel. At this point I have nothing on the "problem drive" and I plan on commemorating it's service by shooting it, but I am rather curious about its issues.

 

[nipplefish]

The difference in using something like DBAN is that DBAN overwrites sectors. Formatting under windows usually does not. Instead windows wipes the file table that basically tells windows where the files start and end, but still leaves the data. As far as windows is concerned the data is gone but it can still be recovered with another program. If you overwrite the data 1 time though it is gone for good.

This is no longer true. XP behaved that way. Vista and 7 write zeros.

The format command behavior has changed in Windows Vista. By default in Windows Vista, the format command writes zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed. In Windows XP and in earlier versions of the Windows operating system, the format command does not write zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed.

Source

 

[Ken90630]

Thanks for the info. I installed the latest chipset drivers and my main drive is now showing up as it should. My "problem drive" however, despite showing up in disk management does not show up under either IDE channel. At this point I have nothing on the "problem drive" and I plan on commemorating it's service by shooting it, but I am rather curious about its issues.

No prob. Glad I could at least get you part of the way there.

I was gonna say maybe the prob is a kinked/damaged SATA cable, but you said you put the bad drive in another PC and it still acted up, so that would rule that out (unless you used the same SATA cable from your PC?).

Strange that the problem drive will show up in Disk Management but not under the IEDE Channel in Dev Mgr. I suppose it's possible that channel on the mobo has gone bad -- for the heck of it, have you tried connecting the problem drive to a different SATA port on your mobo to see if it'll show up? If you do that, use a different SATA cable when you do it (just for the heck of it).

And not to insult your intelligence, but you haven't inadvertently disabled an SATA port in the BIOS have you? Like the one you have the prob drive connected to? I did that once and it took me about an hour to figure out why the PC couldn't see the drive.

I'd kinda like to know what the prob turns out to be too.

 

[Ken90630]

This is no longer true. XP behaved that way. Vista and 7 write zeros.

Interesting. I haven't formatted a drive in Vista or Win 7 yet, so tell me: Does it take a longer to format a drive in V/7 now? Like as long as a pass with DBAN? Or do V/7 have some special way of doing it really quickly?

 

[nipplefish]

Interesting. I haven't formatted a drive in Vista or Win 7 yet, so tell me: Does it take a longer to format a drive in V/7 now? Like as long as a pass with DBAN? Or do V/7 have some special way of doing it really quickly?

Well, I recently did a full format on a 320GB drive I was selling. I didn't time it, but it didn't strike me as excessive... maybe an hour?

I don't see why it should have to take that long, anyway. A full drive copy doesn't take a huge amount of time, and that's technically writing the same amount of data.

 

[brownstone]

Alright, I got snooping around and found that the chipset drivers that I had downloaded from windows update did not fully install (it looked like a partial install, but listed as a failed attempt in the windows update log). I know, I'm probably a fool for trusting in windows update drivers anyway... I got the latest drivers, installed them (switched SATA ports and cable) and it was identified. It's telling me that it is running DMA mode, however when I run the speed test (NVIDIA nforce SATA driver option) it reports that it has a burst speed of 128.9 B/s and a sustained speed of 0 B/s.

 

[Ken90630]

Alright, I got snooping around and found that the chipset drivers that I had downloaded from windows update did not fully install (it looked like a partial install, but listed as a failed attempt in the windows update log). I know, I'm probably a fool for trusting in windows update drivers anyway... I got the latest drivers, installed them (switched SATA ports and cable) and it was identified. It's telling me that it is running DMA mode, however when I run the speed test (NVIDIA nforce SATA driver option) it reports that it has a burst speed of 128.9 B/s and a sustained speed of 0 B/s.

That's good news. We'll assume the prob was the chipset drivers, although I'd be interested to know if the drive still shows up under the IEDE channel in Dev Mgr using the old SATA cable & connected to the original SATA port on the mobo. While not super likely, it's always possible you had two separate problems compounding each other (I've seen it happen).

I'm not familiar with the speed test you ran so I can't really give an educated opinion on those numbers (although the 0 number seems odd, doesn't it?).

If CheckDisk revealed bad sectors (even if repairable), I'd still ditch that drive if I were you after you've successfully DBAN'd it in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[Ken90630]

Well, I recently did a full format on a 320GB drive I was selling. I didn't time it, but it didn't strike me as excessive... maybe an hour?

That's not bad.

I don't see why it should have to take that long, anyway. A full drive copy doesn't take a huge amount of time, and that's technically writing the same amount of data.

Maybe, but I think DBAN usually takes longer than simply copying or formatting a drive 'cuz it does multiple overwrites. I think 3 passes is the default, isn't it? I don't remember for sure -- it's been awhile since I've used it.

Incidentally, do you happen to know of a good data erasure program (like DBAN) that works on flash drives or external hard drives? I can't get DBAN to work on either to save my life. White Canyon makes one, but you can only use on a few drives and then you have to buy it again.

 

[Modelworks]

Incidentally, do you happen to know of a good data erasure program (like DBAN) that works on flash drives or external hard drives? I can't get DBAN to work on either to save my life. White Canyon makes one, but you can only use on a few drives and then you have to buy it again.

The easiest way is to write a file to the drive that is the same size as the capacity of the drive. You can use tools like winhex to do it too but that is riskier because if you are not careful in what you delete you can overwrite the drives firmware killing the drive. I haven't found an automatic program yet that does it correctly with all drives. I use the winhex method and tell family to use a large file.

 

[brownstone]

I can't get DBAN to work on either to save my life. White Canyon makes one, but you can only use on a few drives and then you have to buy it again.

Which DBAN version are you using? Also have you given the manufacturer's hard drive tools a shot? Last but not least, there are a few options that come on UBCD for windows that seem to do pretty good although I can't remember the names of them right off the bat. As long as you don't have a...bad hard drive... any of those should do alright. I'd probably shoot for the UBCD options first since it does a good job of recognizing USB drives.

 

[Ken90630]

The easiest way is to write a file to the drive that is the same size as the capacity of the drive. You can use tools like winhex to do it too but that is riskier because if you are not careful in what you delete you can overwrite the drives firmware killing the drive. I haven't found an automatic program yet that does it correctly with all drives. I use the winhex method and tell family to use a large file.

Hmmm ... simply saving enough files to fill up the drive to full capacity is a really good idea -- such an obvious solution that it didn't even occur to me. I hate you for thinking of it before me.

Thanks.

 

[razel]

Incidentally, do you happen to know of a good data erasure program (like DBAN) that works on flash drives or external hard drives? I can't get DBAN to work on either to save my life.

If you are running Vista/7 you could do the full format in windows explorer.