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Best Utility to Erase RAID 1 HDD

Hi,

I have a couple of HDDs that I want to wipe. There were part of a RAID 1 operating system drive. I plan to attached them via a USB adapter (so they don't get recognized as RAID / Boot Drives).

What is the best utility to erase all partitions on these drives, to effectively restore them to "as-new" state?

enigmasolutions

ASKER

Here is a couple of solutions:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/partition-manager-server.html

http://www.killdisk.com/features.htm

Any recommendations for these or others?

Tony Giangreco

The quickest is hook them up as the primary drive on a Pc, start the install process, delete the partition, create a new one, let windows start installing into that partition and shut the system off.

That partition will be blown and all files that were on that drive will be toast.

David

You don't have to do anything. Just install the new O/S. It will write 1s and 0s where it needs to and ignore the rest.

SOLUTION

Dan Craciun

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enigmasolutions

ASKER

All good answers. Thank you.

But, I want these drives and backup drives (not for future Win OS Install).
Just really want to wipe the partitions quickly.

DBAN looks like the closest fit to what I am after.
Although a quicker partition delete would be handy in this respect.

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bigbigpig

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Dan Craciun

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nobus

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David

Just put linux on a USB stick and type in dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda count=1 and this will blow away the partition in a fraction of a second. But as I wrote, you don't have to do anything if you want to repartition it. Just delete the partition with whatever O/S you are running.

There is no such thing as an "as new" partition.

enigmasolutions

ASKER

I see.

I had trouble deleting the partition at one stage. But I think because I plugged it in to the server it came from. And I think the RAID controller saw it and the BIOS saw the boot sector and tried to boot it. So it wouldn't let me delete the partition that way.

It all got a bit easier once I put the HDD into a USB enclosure and connected it after booting. Yes it was easy to just delete the partition then.

But thanks for all the tips