Erasing hard drives

SuperOwl86 · 11 Jul 2012 at 14:24

I have a OCZ ssd drive and a samsung spinpoint drive from my old computer which I am passing on to a friend.

How is the best way to go about wiping these drives of all data?

wazza300 · 11 Jul 2012 at 14:26

parted magic and do a secure erase for the ssd,and a long format for the hdd

SuperOwl86 · 11 Jul 2012 at 14:32

Am I able to install parted magic onto my pc since the drive looking to wipe are already spares?

wazza300 · 11 Jul 2012 at 14:37

you can put it onto a bootable usb stick,or burn it to a blank cd/dvd

SuperOwl86 · 11 Jul 2012 at 15:05

I seem to be having no luck being able to boot, tried on a usb with no luck so put the iso file onto a blank dvd and just boots to windows.

So i am slightly stumped.

wazza300 · 11 Jul 2012 at 15:17

you can set first boot device as your dvd drive in the bios,it should boot up into parted magic then

SuperOwl86 · 11 Jul 2012 at 15:22

Been trying that would still boot into windows, so I disabled all other options and was getting the I need to reboot or select boot media.

wazza300 · 11 Jul 2012 at 15:25

read this,you may need to put it on usb stick,sorry im a bit rusty as its been a while since i last used it,i used it with kingston usb stick though

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20115106-285/how-to-securely-erase-an-ssd-drive/

Stoner81 · 11 Jul 2012 at 15:26

Have you burnt the ISO properly? Did you just put the ISO file itself on to the disc if so then you did it wrong. Use IMGburn to burn it properly and that should help

WipeDrive Pro is good but it isn't free, Hiren's BootCD has Active Killdisk on it which is super software and it is free.

Stoner81.

SuperOwl86 · 11 Jul 2012 at 16:21

Was my bad as above i failed to burn the image correctly so all sorted on that front.

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/800/photomqn.jpg

Would I be right in thinking this drive is now erased? The drive does not show under the hard drive section and in disk management shows as unallocated.

wazza300 · 11 Jul 2012 at 16:42

SuperOwl86 said:
Was my bad as above i failed to burn the image correctly so all sorted on that front.

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/800/photomqn.jpg

Would I be right in thinking this drive is now erased? The drive does not show under the hard drive section and in disk management shows as unallocated.

you could click start menu,right click computer/manage/storage/disk management and right click/mark as active

PiKe · 11 Jul 2012 at 16:46

Secure erase in 1 second? What?

SuperOwl86 · 11 Jul 2012 at 17:17

wazza300 said:
you could click start menu,right click computer/manage/storage/disk management and right click/mark as active

I have no mark as active option, only option I have is new simple volume.

PiKe said:
Secure erase in 1 second? What?

?

d_brennen · 11 Jul 2012 at 17:28

Pic says it took 1 second. Start 16:04:17 - Finished 16:04:18

Suspicious even for an SSD

d_brennen · 11 Jul 2012 at 17:29

Double pasta

SuperOwl86 · 11 Jul 2012 at 17:31

I know that, thats why I put the picture up so i dont really know whats happened.

wazza300 · 11 Jul 2012 at 17:38

try formatting it normally

Philtor · 12 Jul 2012 at 00:07

Secure erase on a SSD will only take a matter of seconds unlike a HDD.

Menty · 12 Jul 2012 at 21:38

SuperOwl86 said:
Was my bad as above i failed to burn the image correctly so all sorted on that front.

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/800/photomqn.jpg

Would I be right in thinking this drive is now erased? The drive does not show under the hard drive section and in disk management shows as unallocated.

I used secure erase on my 2 year old Kingston yesterday as it was not aligned according to AS SSD.

Same problem as you I could not see it afterwards.

Had a fantastic result today though with Kingston EU customer services (UK based).
I told them it happened after a secure erase but they still say it is faulty and will be replaced.

I know it's not helping you but was just shocked how helpful Kingston have been today (even though I have already replaced it with a faster Sandisk Extreme).

Try contacting OCZ it's worth a shot to see if they can help or advise.