8 Way Random Write Format??? What's it's benefits compared to "Zeros"?

Pretend you wrote a secret pass code on a piece of paper using pencil. You erase it but you can still faintly see it there. So you write 0's over it. Can you still see some of the pass code? Possibly. Now what if you erase the 0's and write random things on top of it? Can you still see the passcode? Probably not.

It's an analogy and not "how it works" but... that should make sense to most everybody.

But unless you're super paranoid... 0's should be fine. Heck a format should be fine. *Most* people aren't out to get you.

 

If you're keeping the system, zeroing the drive is fine. If you're getting rid of the system (or disk) and don't trust where it's going, the 8 way random write will pretty much make the data on the disk unrecoverable. (Although data recovery is getting better all the time.)

If you want to know more about the 8 way, search the net on "data security erase".

 

Notice how Apple tells you it takes longer using the additional erase options. I did the 8 way thingy last week on a 4gig drive and it took over 3 hours! If I do a regular erase, its done in under 2 minutes.

 

8-Way Random Write is government-level security for erasing disks that can not be recovered. I doubt any of us has data that needs this level of erasure protection, unless of course you are self-professed religious person, on the edge of death, and need to erase your large stash of donkey porn videos.

 

It is called Erase under the Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. Options provided the additional options you mentioned to make the formatting more complete. Unchecking the options and using Erase just cleans out directory information without actually clearing out data. It is super fast no matter how big your hard drive is. Probably the most common way to format a drive.

 

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Its actually HFS+ yknow....
HFS -System 2 to System 7
HFS+ -System 8.1 to Current

 

I guess you are trying to erase your donkey porn eh?

 

Well, if you ever bought a used computer or a used hard drive before and pulled the old data that was erased the hard drive then began to read there address book, checking account balances, surfing history, txt that contains passwords, turbo tax files, family pictures, etc etc etc