Why is DBAN taking days to complete 35 passes?

[gamingworld]

I'm planning on reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows as soon as I complete the obliteration of all previous data on my laptop HDD, but it seems like DBAN is taking ages to complete the wipe using the Gutmann method. It's been 2 days now and I'm still under 20 passes. Does anybody know of a way to speed it up? Will I mess up the hard drive if I terminate it now using the Power button?

 

[ahnilated]

There is no way to speed it up. You are doing a 35 pass random data write. There is absolutely no way you needed to do more than a 7 pass random data write. Depending on the drive size I have seen a 35 pass random write take 2 weeks (2TB for mine).

 

[USAFRet]

For a system that you will continue to use, there is zero reason for 35 passes.

And it takes as long as it will take. No speeding it up.

 

[molletts]

One pass of zeros (or the drive's built-in secure erase function) is all you need if you just want to start with a clean, "as-shipped" drive unless you have the launch codes for the US nuclear arsenal on there and are about to take it on vacation to Russia. Or something really, really illegal that you don't want the FBI/MI5/whoever to be able to get their hands on and you think they would be prepared to spend a lot of time and money to obtain. (If that's the case, then your safest bet is to melt the drive down in a high-temperature crucible as I believe some government agencies do when they want to dispose of old drives securely.)

If you're just super-paranoid (maybe you got curious and downloaded a copy of a banned book from Freenet to see what all the fuss was about), a few passes (such as the old DoD wipe) is plenty.

How much would the data on the drive be worth to whoever you want to keep it safe from? If the answer is less than a few tens of millions of dollars (or the security of the free world) then there's no point in wasting time doing loads of passes. Bear in mind that there's no way to recover what has been overwritten by even a single pass without specialist hardware, software and expertise.

When I wipe an old drive of unknown provenance prior to rebuilding someone's PC, I use 55/aa/ff/00 patterns with read-and-compare after each pass (not sure if DBAN can do this) which serves as a basic media test while also leaving the drive "as-shipped" at the end of the process. I've had a few drives that are fine with all-zeros but fail on one of the other patterns which makes the extra time worthwhile. I also check the SMART counters before and after the process to see if any bad sectors get mapped out.

 

[gamingworld]

Thanks for the answers everybody. Should have figured 35 passes is overkill because I wasn't exactly running from the government. I terminated DBAN by pressing and holding the power button (this was confirmed to be safe on their forums), and reinstalled a fresh copy of Windows successfully on the 1 TB hard disk drive.

 

[USAFRet]

And if you are running from the government, a shredder is what to use.
Make hard drive confetti, and replace it with another $50 drive.