Erasing speed depends on many factors:
For most modern computers and disks (manufactured within the last 5-7 years) SATA III standard is supported, so erase speed is limited by HDD throughput (disk write speed) only.
Our tests give the results: 10GB in average per minute per pass on average computer configuration and disks which age is up to 5 years old.
For example, 2TB Toshiba disk has been erased on Windows platform with one pass within 3 hours and 32 minutes, 14TB WD disk - within 18h 53m.
Real-test results produced by KillDisk (click erase methods below to view certificates):
Real-test results produced by our home-built KillDisk Industrial System:
Note: These erase results may differ from yours for similar disk types and sizes as long as ours home built KillDisk Industrial Systems & Desktops use specific hardware optimized to produce the best results (utilize maximum speed while erasing).
Active@ KillDisk communicates with the system board Basic Input-Output Subsystem (BIOS) functions to access hardware directly.
It uses Logical Block Addressing (LBA) access if necessary to clean FAT32 drives more than 8 Gb in size. To erase data it overwrites all addressable locations on the drive with zeros (FREE version). Active@ KillDisk Professional version suggests several methods for data destruction.
For example, in US DoD 5220.22-M method it overwrites all addressable storage and indexing locations on the drive three times: with zeros (0x00), complement (0xFF) and random characters; and then verifies all writing procedures. This complies with the US DoD 5220.22-M security standard.
Hard Drives may be erased individually in a JBOD configuration, however, it is more optimal to configure the array of disks using either a RAID0+1 or a RAID 10 configuration as depicted below.
You should use a software like killdisk. The striping information is stored on sectors on the disk, and since Killdisk erases all sectors, it will erase those sectors as well.
All types of HDD are supported: SATA, SAS, SCSI, USB, as well as SSD, M.2 & U.2 NVMe. KillDisk will clean it up properly if hard disk drive is visible in BIOS, or accessible under Windows environment (device drivers properly installed).
To be able to use HDD again you need to:
The software uses platform dependent device I\O functions to get serial numbers from hard drives.
Most, if not all, RAID controllers do not properly process these requests.
Typically, a RAID controller is used to hook up 2 or more hard drives in such a way that the operating system thinks it is one drive. Therefore, the operating system can not access the drives individually. When queried for a hard drive's serial number, the RAID controller does not know which serial number to return, so it does not return a serial number at all. All RAID controllers tested will do this even if there is only one drive in the RAID set.
It does not matter which operating system is installed on the machine. If you can boot machine using supplied bootable disk (from CD/DVD or USB drive), you can erase any drives independently of Operating System installed. The only requirement is that machine be a standard 64-bit Intel-architecture (Intel or AMD processor).
KillDisk runs on any PC-compatible machine, which is based on 64-bit Intel architecture. It does not run on MIPS, ARM, PPC processors, for example it won't run on Sun SPARC systems or iPad & Android tablets. KillDisk can run on Apple macOS \ OS X.
NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 recommends using sanitization methods appropriate for the type of storage media being processed. For example, overwrite methods can be used for HDDs, while device-specific commands such as Secure Erase are recommended for SSDs when supported by the drive.
Active@ KillDisk already implements these sanitization methods, including single-pass and triple-pass overwrites, as well as Secure Erase for SSD (if supported by manufacturer). The Secure Erase feature uses the drive's built-in low-level ATA erase command and is designed specifically for SSD media (it can severely damage HDD if executed accidentally).
For more information about the Secure Erase functionality, please refer to our user guide.
For more information NIST SP 800-88 revision 2, please read original specification.
