Secure Erase via Terminal so annoyingly unreliable...

[mbosse]

Dear all:

ever since Apple removed the Secure Erase function form Disk Utility I have to rely on the terminal function. However, these often abort for no reason (and with no warning) so I need a number of attempts until I successfully have overwritten a HDD (I do this to evaluate full functionality).

I set my Macs (on Sequoia or Tahoe) to never go to sleep and hook them up on a power supply.

Does anyone here have suggestions on what to do? Are other apps existing who provide such functionality?

Thanks a lot,
Magnus

 

[Bigwaff]

Does anyone here have suggestions on what to do? Are other apps existing who provide such functionality?

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Or apps which provide secure erase of hard drive disks? Not sure. I would imagine any free GUI utility would simply be a wrapper around the disktutil secureErase ... command.

 

[bogdanw]

However, these often abort for no reason (and with no warning) so I need a number of attempts until I successfully have overwritten a HDD (I do this to evaluate full functionality).

How does unnecessarily wearing down the hard drive help evaluate functionality?
You could check the S.M.A.R.T. status.