First of all, I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum for this thread; I'll move it or delete it if there's a problem. The problem/Context: I found an old 2TB WD Caviar Green HDD that I previously have from another PC. It has almost 800 GB in use. When I tried to open some folders, literally, my OS crash and the system is unresponsive for a few minutes. Other times I can access those folders/files, but they're, for lack of better words, very "buggy." To put in perpective, sometimes when I'm playing an .mkv file from the HDD, the video gets laggy or appears weird pixels on the image. (I checked the CRCs to see if the video itself was not corrupt... A single video of 300~400 mb took almost 20 minutes to get fully scanned... aanndd the CRC was ok. The same happen with other videos. Moreover, the speed of the data transfer when I copy a file to the local drive is EXTREMELY slow. I know HDDs are very slow compared to SDDs, but, holy cow, I'm getting 220 KB/s and it says 6 hours left to complete 1.5GB... Also, while it's copying, sometimes the explorer propmts a window saying X file can't be read/copy and I need to skip it in order to complete the transfer. Yesterday I tried to extract a .rar that was already on the disk to see if I can write on it... Jesus Christ, even when the size was just 1.2mb the drive crash/gets unresposive/slowdown my system. A few more details: 1) This behaviour is random. Sometimes the HDD let me copy some files at 20MB/s or read them normally or access with some speed to the folders/files. 2) I already checked the cables and replace them. 3) AFAIK, there's no physical damage. I package and store it well. 4) The drive is, probably (?), 6-7 years old. 5) I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate (32 bits), 2GB RAM. The question: Is there a way to erase absolutely everything on the disc? I know that when you have a corrupted disk, a good solution is perform a full format and wipe ou all the data. Could you tell me how I can do a full (not a quick) format? I was reading that it can be accomplished with CMD using the following attributes, but I don't know if it's true or nor: Spoiler diskpart list disk select disk X clean create partition primary format fs=ntfs label=MyDrive assign letter=G Other users suggest that is better to use external tools to format the disk, but which one? Last but not least, how long does it take to format a 2TB drive? Right now, the regime of my country is applying electric rationing to control the masses, so I'm getting 12-15 hours/day of electrical service... Can you imagine cutting off the light while the disk is being formatted? I'm open to suggestions, pals. Any support you could give is VERY welcome! Thank you in advance!
Based on all the data you have provided, there is nothing wrong with this HDD, but the data on this drive may be damaged, locked, or protected if you have used this HDD on different computers. As for the slowness, it's quite normal that a 2GB drive is a bit too much for a 32-bit old Windows 7. If you want to delete, (wipe and format all), then you need to keep in mind that with this computer (Windows 7 x86 Ultimate), it will take a very long time. But I would suggest you do it anyway, because this HDD is very likely to be perfectly fine. I would recommend the following order: - Use the normal method to delete everything on this disc - wipe whole disk, overwrite with zeros 1x - make new partition (whole disk one partition at the beginning) - if possible, then deep format, if not then also suitable for Quick Format and after that run chkdsk, this means checking and repairing the disk in case any sector is bad. If you do deep format, you don't need additional disk control anymore. As for third-party disk maintenance programs, use what you have. You don't need anything special and you are free to use the free version. For example, MiniTool Partition Wizard, AOMEI Partition Assistant, EaseUS Partition Master, FreePARAGON Hard Disk Manager, Macrorit Partition Expert, etc. There are lots of them. In future if You uses HDD, don't use never partition for OS large than 250-300GB. And if You uses MBR disk then You can't make more than 4 partitions on it. Make at least two and all others let be logical, only this one, where is OS, let be primary and active. Good luck to You. I forgot to warn: - if You have slow computer (32-bit) or You uses adapter with USB 2 for this HDD, the cleaning, formatting etc may take very long time. (here a very long time means several days).
The diskpart command clean will not sanitize the disk. Use clean all to zero out the disk. If the disk is mechanically sound, it typically takes around 10 hours per TB for a 5,400rpm disk, so it should take close to 20 hours to complete.
You have hit the nail, @kaljukass. Before of this, IIRC, I used the HDD on about 3 or 4 PCs before. I was reading about a tool called HDD Low Level Format, which claims it can erase the whole disk (like a brand new HDD)... Do you think it can be used to overwrite with zeros or there's a better tool that you know it can do the task?
Hi, interesting topic... Question here If the clean all command will zero out the disk, wouldn't it be redundant to use the format fs=ntfs command? I mean, you ALREADY erased everything from the disk... I would use format fs=ntfs quick instead after clean all. I'm just guessing of course. Also, I have my doubts about how the lifespan will get severed OVERWRITING E V E R Y S I N G L E block of the HDD... And the disk being that old... Good luck compaqmx and watch out with these people trying to destroy your disk without you even noticing
Absolutely. But, as noted above, I understand the OP would like to render any data on it unrecoverable.
If the hardware is damaged or bad, formatting is wasted time. Instead, physically destroy the drive. That's what companies do with unusable HDDs they don't want to be recoverable by forensic tools.