How do you know and tell when the 7 secure erase pass worked and succeeded?

[Marissa Gamble]

I am selling my Mac Pro G5 and I have been through heck of the 7 secure erase pass and It always said startup disk is almost full. So i used the Disk Sweeper and delete ALOT of GB finally. Now a couple of days ago I did the 7 secure erase pass and it completed in about 2 hours, BUT it didn't say any pop up message , thank goodness. So i believe it succeeded fully. Everything was all greyed out when done. But how it the world do you know if it is done and worked so i can sell my mac.. like I said before I used the Disk Sweeper and erased all my hidden files and other Software. So how do you know and tell when the 7 secure erase pass worked and is succeeded?

 

[goMac]

2 hours sounds way too quick.

But really, all you need to do is zero the drive. A 7 erase pass is pretty much even beyond what the federal government does. A little overkill.

 

[Marissa Gamble]

It might have been more.. I was away from my computer? But how do you know if worked?

I was away from my computer at the time so it may have been several hours.. but I need a straight answer .. How do you know if is completed and worked successfully? I am doing the 7 erase secure pass JUST to make sure know one get's my personal data. I researched on this.. can someone give me an answer to know if worked lol? and how to tell?

 

[ActionableMango]

I've had the 7-pass erase fail every time on one particular hard drive. When it fails, there is an error message. I'd run it overnight and in the morning see that it had failed. I never could get it working on that drive, so in the end I hammered the drive's control board, drilled holes through the drive enclosure and platters, and threw it in the trash.

If you didn't get the error message, I'd say it worked.

Alternatively, you can run the 1-pass erase on seven occasions while you are present doing other things, to be 100% sure.

 

[goMac]

I was away from my computer at the time so it may have been several hours.. but I need a straight answer .. How do you know if is completed and worked successfully? I am doing the 7 erase secure pass JUST to make sure know one get's my personal data. I researched on this.. can someone give me an answer to know if worked lol? and how to tell?

You hire a professional hacker to try to get your data back. That's the only way to verify the data is actually gone.

I mean, I'm a software engineer, and I wouldn't even know how to get data out of a single pass erase, much less how to verify a 7 pass.

But usually 7 pass erases take days, not hours.

 

[Marissa Gamble]

I will just do the Zero Out Deleted Files

Great! Thanks soo much of the feedback both of you guys.. Now I don't have to feel so paranoid on 7 secure erase pass. I will just do the Zero out deleted files. 7 times . i will be home all day

 

[philipma1957]

First question is what size is your hdd.


Second if it is a mechanical drive it will erase at 100MB/s or so. that is about 4 or 5 gb per min. so a 500gb hdd will take 700 mins.


next once you start the erase go to utility monitor app call it up and view your erase speed. I will set up a picture screen in a few minutes. my shot shows two jobs the red one on top is the erase job of 7 . if you do the job after a fresh boot. your data read will be 0 gb and your data written will be 0 tb or 0 gb if you look at the screen shot notice it reads the 500gb 7 times erase takes 6 hours .. in the time it took me to write this it now reads 9 hours which is closer to correct. so this 500gb 7 times erase will take 9 hours. if you go back in 2 hours you will be on the second pass. if you go back in 4 hours you will be on the third or fourth pass.