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Do you know if its a long process to do say a 500 GB Hard Drive
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It depends what you consider as long.<br />
Usually a 500Gb disk takes up to two hours, considering all sectors on the disk have been zeroed out.
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Hi All I have a bunch of Hard Drives that I need the data completely wiped from I know a format will not completely destroy the data on them,<br />
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Is there any free or cheap software out there that can do this quickly and effectively<br />
<br />
John
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Hi All I have a bunch of Hard Drives that I need the data completely wiped from I know a format will not completely destroy the data on them,

Is there any free or cheap software out there that can do this quickly and effectively

John

Do you know if its a long process to do say a 500 GB Hard Drive

It depends what you consider as long.
Usually a 500Gb disk takes up to two hours, considering all sectors on the disk have been zeroed out.

Deleting Data From a Drive

Hardware includes cell phones and other digital living devices, tablets, computers, servers, peripherals and components, printers and scanners, gaming consoles, networking hardware such as routers, hubs, switches and modems, storage devices and security equipment such as firewalls and other appliances.

Hardware

Storage devices include any device used for storing and retrieving digital information. Hard disk drives (HDDs) use one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. The primary competing technology for secondary storage is flash memory in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs), but HDDs remain the dominant medium for secondary storage due to advantages in price per bit and per-device recording capacity. CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a digital optical disc storage format that allows information to be stored outside the mechanical HDD.

Storage Hardware

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media used to retain digital data. In addition to local storage devices like CD and DVD readers, hard drives and flash drives, solid state drives can hold enormous amounts of data in a very small device. Cloud services and other new forms of remote storage also add to the capacity of devices and their ability to access more data without building additional data storage into a device.