What is the fastest way to erase a SATA drive?

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True Colors

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I am using Darik's Boot and Nuke application to erase a 2 TB western digital SATA drive. It is taking FOREVER...... as in 5 days.

I have a 5 year old Dell computer.....P4, 2.8 Ghz. I connected it to this SATA drive by using an external USB to SATA adapter cable.

Is there some way to speed this up?

Thanks,

TC
 
A simple format would erase the contents of the drive. If you can hook the drive up to a computer and get into windows, you can right click the drive in Windows Explorer and format it. Just be sure that "quick format" is not enabled.
 
DBAN does a Department of Defense grade erase so it will take a very long time. You don't need that unless you are going to sell/give away the drive. If you just want to erase it, do a low level format on it.
 
The hard drive I referenced at the beginning of this thread is 2 terabytes. I want to erase it and then keep using it myself. So I do not have any security concerns or anything like that. So perhaps DBAN might be the wrong application. Maybe it is overkill.

My hard drive has a few applications on it that are linux based. I want to erase all of that and then put a couple of new linux applications onto the drive.

Can I do this with Microsoft windows and my external adapter cable?

Thanks,

TC
 
Attach drive to computer, disk management, format.

My initial answer was going to be Microwave, but then you said you wanted to keep using it...

:(
 
Just do a Quick Format under Windows then. My Computer -> choose the driver, write click on it, select Format and and mark Quick Format and... get a cup of tea, add milk and half way through the cup it should be all over...
 
Agree with mindover. If you're going to use it for linux apps then use gparted to format the drive to ext4.
 
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