how long does max secure pass take for 4TB drive 2TB data

Securely erasing a large mechanical hard disk will probably remind you of an old cartoon.

The one with a cobwebbed skeleton, slumped in front of a computer terminal, with the caption "SYSTEM BEEN DOWN LONG?"

Not a joke, this medium does not lend it self to joking, because to be a joke it needs to be OBVIOUSLY not true, and we don't know each other well enough to know when that is.

If this drive is going back to the manufacturer, the folks who receive it are not capable of harvesting your data off it.

If it won't make it through erase, it's a good thing you are sending it back, it will likely get scrapped.

about four to eight hours per pass time 17 passes.

that REALLY is not necessary.

unless you have nuclear secrets on your rotating magnetic drive, ONE click beyond the default is all you need.

janet99x wrote:

enough of the jokes. has anyone successfully done even one click on the erase. mine continually hangs and then freezes.

Erasure works fine on a working hard disk drive.

On a semi- or non-working hard disk drive, erasure too semi- or non-works.

One-pass erasure is good enough for the vast majority of uses and users.

Multi-pass erasure for ancient and sloppy storage devices — floppies, and hard disks prior to the use of embedded servo tracks — while single-pass erasure works for the rest.

Better still is storage encryption, as clobbering that key renders that data inaccessible. This is the preferred solution.

If you can’t risk data compromise or can’t wait or if the storage has sufficiently failed, then physically destroy the storage device. Various data disposal providers offer destructive shredding, for instance.

Depending on the speed of the hard drive and the USB interface, it can easily take a day or two just to perform a single pass of a 4TB hard drive. If that drive has issues, then the process could take even longer....or never even finish if the problem is bad enough. Of course if the port issue causes a problem, then it will either abort the process or just get stuck.

You really don't need more than a single pass of zeroes unless of course you have state secrets.

<< wondering why I can't get through one erase. >.

because your drive is garbage -- send it back to the maker for replacement or an adjustment.

You may have 29 of them, but if that one can't make it through even a single erase pass, it is so much garbage.