Secure random erase

[Tech198]

From a security standpoint, how long does it take to securely erase a hard drive using: diskutil syntax. With the random erase option.

Approx. For 500. Gig

And when Apple says "random" in general to the pass applied, apart from the zero-pass, they all do somewhat, is it Truly random? As apple doesn't say what patten.

 

[mrapplegate]

From a security standpoint, how long does it take to securely erase a hard drive using: diskutil syntax. With the random erase option.

Approx. For 500. Gig

And when Apple says "random" in general to the pass applied, apart from the zero-pass, they all do somewhat, is it Truly random? As apple doesn't say what patten.

I would think it would vary for each computer, hard drive RPM speed, etc. As for the pattern part, if there were a pattern it would not be random.
Truly random? I think you're getting into semantics, as one could debate random.

 

[Quad5Ny]

At 33MB/s zeroing a 120GB HDD took me about a 55min yesterday. So if you do some math, I'm sure you could figure out how long 500GB (at a different write speed) would take.

Oh and don't bother with the random pass, its not much more secure than writing zeros.