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21 Nov 2009

Support Center » Knowledgebase » How Long Does it Take to Wipe a Drive with WipeDrive?

	How Long Does it Take to Wipe a Drive with WipeDrive?

Solution The time it takes to wipe a drive is limited by the speed of the hardware being wiped, not the software. Each sector on the drive must be overwritten to ensure that the data has been erased. Older drives will take much longer to wipe than newer drives. Larger drives will take longer to wipe than smaller drives.

The following benchmarks are from IDE drives and were performed on an older Pentium III. Newer systems can expect at least a 50% increase in speed. However, wipe speed is not dependent on processor speed, so much as the features and quality of the actual hard drive being wiped.

Hitachi 250 GB
1 pass: 156 mins (0.6 min/GB)
DoD 3 pass w/verify: 461 mins
(1.8 min/GB)

WD Caviar 40 GB
1 pass: 107 mins (2.7 min/GB)
DoD 3 pass w/verify: 662 mins
(16 min/GB)

WD Caviar 8 GB
1 pass: 32 mins (4 min/GB)
DoD 3 pass w/verify: 160 mins
(20 min/GB)

Seagate 1.2 GB
1 pass: 7 mins (5.5 min/GB)
DoD 3 pass w/verify: 33 mins
(27 min/GB)

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14 Jul 2005 03:31 PM