Writing zeros to an external disk. . .

[ghboard2010]

When attempting to zero out the data on an external FW800 drive, I see these little gems.

Hmmm. . . This is "quick" ?!?; Really?.

Gee, good thing I didn't select the 7-, or 35-pass option!

Does anyone have a suggestion about how to speed this up? I really do not think eight hours to write zeros to any size disk in a single pass qualifies as quick.


BTW, the 8 hour indication was at the 1 hour 20 minute point in this process; sheesh, even 1hr.+ ain't what I'd call "quick"

 

[spinnerlys]

Writing 2TBs of data via Firewire 800 will take time, and 8 hours sounds about right, I come up with 500 minutes using a write speed of 70MB/s.
Even if you would not have been limited by FW800 and only by the maximum HDD speed (around 105MB/s), it would still take 322 minutes.

Btw, your signature alludes to you having 12MB of RAM, are you sure about that?

 

[Grannyville7989]

It took my Windows 7 computer around 45-60 minutes to zero out my 250GB internal drive in a single pass, so I'll say that 8 hours for a 2TB drive is pretty damn quick. When I got my external USB 1.5TB Western Digital drive, I did a full format on it and it took nearly 24 hours to complete.

 

[ghboard2010]

Writing 2TBs of data via Firewire 800 will take time, and 8 hours sounds about right, I come up with 500 minutes using a write speed of 70MB/s.
Even if you would not have been limited by FW800 and only by the maximum HDD speed (around 105MB/s), it would still take 322 minutes.

Btw, your signature alludes to you having 12MB of RAM, are you sure about that?

Doh!

Well we'll fix that; there fixed

It took my Windows 7 computer around 45-60 minutes to zero out my 250GB internal drive in a single pass, so I'll say that 8 hours for a 2TB drive is pretty damn quick. When I got my external USB 1.5TB Western Digital drive, I did a full format on it and it took nearly 24 hours to complete.

Well gee, I guess when the dialog panel says "This is quick...", 'quick' is a actually a useless, meaningless term with no basis in the real world. 'Tis a pity that!