2024-11-28

Utilities for Erasing A Western Digital Hard Drive

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM02 mins

Utilities for Erasing A Western Digital Hard DriveWestern Digital provides softwares that can erase(Low Level Format) all the data on a hard drive. Writing zeros to a hard drive is recommended any time an operating system is to be reinstalled on a boot drive or whenever a blank drive is desired.

1. Erasing WD Internal Hard Drives and Solid State Drives

Internal hard drives and Solid State drives can be erased by these softwares bellow. All these methods require access to your PC (To low level format your drive on a Mac you will need to contact Apple for assistance).

Softwares for Erasing your WD hard drive:

2. Erasing WD External Hard Drives

Western Digital external hard drives only support writing zeros to the drive using the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics utility. In addition, if your drive includes the WD SmartWare software, you have a second option which does not write zeros to the drive, but does fully erase the drive.

Softwares for Erasing your WD hard drive:

Important: If your drive includes a Western Digital Virtual CD-Rom (VCD) drive, this partition will not be removed by performing a low-level format on the hard drive.

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How To Completely Clean Data From Your Hard Drives And SSDs? (Part I)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM05 mins

Clean Data From Hard Drive And SSD With stories abounding of identity theft aided by information lifted from discarded storage devices, you want devices you no longer plan to use to have no usable information when they head out the door. Here’s how to wipe them clean.

Why Erasing Files Is Not Enough

Sure, you could erase the contents of the drive, but keep this in mind: the act of erasing a file does not remove it from a storage device.

When you erase/delete a file from your computer, it’s not really gone until the areas of the disk it used are overwritten by new information. If you use the normal Windows delete function, the “deleted” file is sent to the Recycle Bin until the space it uses is required by other files. If you use Shift-Delete to bypass the Recycle Bin, the space occupied by the file is marked as available for other files. However, the file could be recovered days or even weeks later with third-party data recovery software. As long as the operating system does not reuse the space occupied by a file with another file, the “deleted” file can be recovered.

With SSDs, the erased file situation is even more complex. SSDs store data in blocks rather than in sectors as with magnetic storage. Overwriting a block was previously used involves copying the contents of the block to cache, wiping the block’s contents, delete the block to be overwritten from cache, writing the new data to cache, and rewriting the block with the new data. As an SSD is used with files that are deleted or changed frequently, the performance can drop unless the drive (and operating system) support a technology called TRIM that wipes out deleted data blocks as soon as the file using the blocks is deleted. TRIM is supported by Windows 7 and by some late model SSDs, but not by older Windows versions. So, disk wiping can be both a security feature and a performance improvement strategy.

Data Wiping Versus File Erasure

While erasing files simply marks file space as available for reuse, data wiping overwrites all data space on a storage device, replacing useful data with garbage data. Depending upon the method used, the overwrite data could be zeros (also known as “zero-fill”) or could be various random patterns.

Products that can be used for wiping hard disks might not be suitable for wiping other types of drives. In this article, we will look at methods for securely wiping hard disks, USB flash memory devices, flash memory cards, and SSDs.

Zero-Fill a Hard Disk

Time Needed: several hours (varies with size and speed of drive)
Software: Hard disk utility software from your drive vendor
Media: blank CD or floppy disk

Although writing zeroes across the entire hard disk surface (aka “zero-filling”) is not sufficient to meet government data sanitation (disk wiping) standards such as DoD 5220.22-M or the more comprehensive Standards and Technologies (NIST) Special Publication 800-88, overwriting the entire hard disk prevents most types of data recovery from being successful.

Here’s where to get zero-fill software from hard disk vendors:

Hitachi

Drive Fitness Test
Select the Erase Drive feature to zero-fill your hard disk.

Drive Fitness Test

Samsung

HUtil
Use Tool, Erase HDD to zero-fill your hard disk.

Hutil

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Use External Hard Drive as an Internal Hard Drive

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM08 mins

Hi guys. Hard drive prices as you all know have been hiked up terribly. Here in South Africa, internal hard drives 1Tb was R600 = $75. The world shortage caused the hard drives to skyrocket in price from R600 to R1800. That’s a $150 price increase!

Now down to business. I have an external hard drive. Samsung Story. 1TB. I would just like to know what the possibility is, to take the hard drive out of it’s enclosure, connecting it via a SATA port and using it as the internal hard drive. (booting windows, installing games and programs)

You should easily be able to do this, however, I would be careful when removing the case. A lot of them are made not to come off, so be careful not to damage the drive when removing the case. It should be a standard hard drive inside. You might want to make sure it’s out of warranty before opening the case though. Also, I don’t think the enclosure’s controller is doing anything funny with the data, but if it is, you may need to reformat the drive once it’s in your computer.

Use Internal Hard Drive as an External Hard Drive

It is easy and inexpensive to convert an internal hard drive to an external one. All you need is a hard drive enclosure that fits your existing internal hard drive. Hard drive enclosures are widely available at computer stores and online. Prices range from as little as five dollars for a basic one-drive USB 2.0 enclosure to over a hundred dollars for enclosures that hold multiple internal drives in RAID arrays with eSATA interfaces. You probably don’t need to spend more than $20 for a basic one-drive enclosure.

Removing a hard drive from a laptop or desktop is easy. Power down and unplug the computer. On most laptops, you’ll remove a plastic panel from the underside of the laptop with one or two small screws. Remove the drive by gently tugging it free from the connectors, and you’re done. On a desktop, open the system case, and locate the hard drive in its metal bay. Disconnect the power and data cables, remove the screws holding the drive in the bay, and slide it out. Just remember, you’re removing the hard drive, but NOT opening it up. Doing so will damage the sensitive internal components.

You do need to make sure you buy the right kind of drive enclosure kit, so it will be compatible with the drive you’ve removed from the desktop or laptop.

The first consideration is the size of your hard drive. Laptop drives are all 2.5 inches, while desktop drives are usually 3.5 inches. Determine the size of your internal hard drive and shop for a hard drive enclosure into which it fits. Note that 3.5 inch drives generally require an external power supply, while 2.5 inch drives can pull their power from the computer to which they connect.

The drive interface is another critical factor. Old hard drives may use an IDE interface. Many new drives use the speedier SATA interface. Make sure the enclosure you select supports your internal hard drive’s interface. If you have any confusion about the size or interface for your drive, just Google the name. For example, I have an old hard drive that I pulled from a defunct desktop computer. The markings on the drive say “WD Caviar 36400” so a quick search for that phrase tells me it’s a 6.4GB Western Digital, 3.5 inch, IDE drive.

Use internal hard drive as an external drive

Connecting the External Hard Drive to Your Computer

The connector on a hard drive enclosure is the means by which it is connected to your computer. USB 2.0 is a common connector because most computers support it. Firewire is another option if your computer has an available Firewire port. An eSATA connector is faster than USB 2.0 or Firewire, but relatively few computers and enclosures support eSATA at this time.

The enclosure box may be made of aluminum, plastic, or some other material. A box sporting LED indicators helps you observe drive activity. Other bells and whistles are optional.

Installing an internal drive is into an enclosure is easy. You may need a screwdriver, but no special tools are required. Just avoid static electricity and don’t force any connectors. If you are enclosing an IDE drive, make sure to set its master/slave jumpers to the positions recommended in the enclosure’s instructions. SATA drives do not require jumper settings.

Connect the enclosure’s interface cable to the internal hard drive’s interface connector. Plug the enclosure’s power cable into the drive. Fasten the drive into the enclosure with the fasteners provided. Close up the enclosure.

If necessary, plug in the external drive’s power cord. If you don’t need external power, just plug the connector cable into the appropriate USB, Firewire, or eSATA port on your computer. Mac and Windows computers should recognize the new drive automatically. It should appear in your drives list with its own drive letter. Copy a few files to and from the new drive to make sure everything is working. Then enjoy your new external hard drive!

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