DBAN vs. ???

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Anyone know if DBAN can tell the difference between a USB2 and USB3 connection?

I’m in the process of running it on a 4TB drive connected to a backup computer, through a USB2 connection. DBAN says it’s gonna take 172+ hours, which comes out to 7+ days!!!

I’m just trying to figure out, if it makes sense to add a USB3 port to the computer, since DBAN is my primary disk wiper…

OR do you know another piece of free software that’ll do as good a job, but more quickly. It can be a standalone product (boots off it’s own disk) or something that runs under Win7 or higher.

thanks!

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Well, that’s probably accurate. How many passes do you intend for it to make?
Four terabytes is a lot of reading/writing, you know?

Regardless of the program, the time depends upon the hardware’s throughput.
USB 3 is potentially faster than USB 2, of course.

RockE

Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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Well, that’s probably accurate. How many passes do you intend for it to make?
Four terabytes is a lot of reading/writing, you know?

Regardless of the program, the time depends upon the hardware’s throughput.
USB 3 is potentially faster than USB 2, of course.

RockE

By default, DBAN uses 3 passes. I don’t know if it is adjustable. If I remember, I’ll check–in about a week!

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You only need 1 pass with random data to make the drive secure. (There is a reference post in the lounge somewhere but I’m too lazy to look it up.)

cheers, Paul

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Just freaking do a long format.

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Just freaking do a long format.

I’ve never heard of a “long format”. How about some more info? How does one do it (under Win7, I assume?).
I was able to find some info about “long format” in an article that is nearly 10 years old. The “long format” seems to be the normal non-quick format offered by Windows. However, it only makes 1 pass. DBAN makes 3 passes and supposedly wipes to a Mil spec, used by the DoD. From what I read, a “long format” only writes 00s in one pass, which depending on what’s on the drive may not be adequate. Since I don’t know what was on this drive, ti’s getting the “full treatment”.

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Since I don’t know what was on this drive, ti’s getting the “full treatment”.

It sounds like you have acquired an old computer, and you want to completely clean the drive before you install Windows, so as to make sure you are starting off clean.

If you delete the partition and create a new partition as part of the Windows install process, that should be sufficient cleaning.

However, if you don’t feel that is enough cleaning of the old drive, it might be better simply to purchase a new drive, and toss the old drive. Not only will you start off clean, but also, the hard drive failure “clock” will be reset to zero. (In other words, by getting a new drive, it will be that much longer before it fails.) Also, it will be bigger and faster than the drive you now have.

Or, you might want to just get an SSD. An SSD will greatly speed up an old computer.

When you are doing a clean install of Windows, you might as well get a new drive, because you have to reinstall everything anyway.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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That will probably take about the same time as running DBAN with a single pass…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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It took about 18 hours for my Win 7 to do a full format on a 1TB external HDD…..

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You seem very concerned about what might have been on the drive. If so, then walk away and let DBAN do its work. Basically, who cares about the time? It is a one time thing where you don’t have to watch it work.

--Joe

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Hey Joe, remember the old days of Windows 3.1 – WFW 3.11, when one can watch Microsoft’s defragger [made by Peter Norton] blue squares march downward and downward…almost like Space Invaders.
DBAN autorun is going to take lots of time. Next time, I will try the other menu choices, and see if one pass is one of those choices.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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