Suspiciously fast secure disk erase with APFS

[Sirolway]

Hi all

I'm going through a bunch of old (spinning) disks and wiping them. I'm reformatting them to APFS; I first do a simple (non-secure) erase, then a 3-pass secure erase. The insecure erase is basically instant, but so is the secure erase which is supposed to be writing 3 passes of data to the disk. This doesn't feel credible to me - it's too fast - are these disks really securely erased or should I worry about my data being recoverable?

The only alternative I can think of is that APFS is able to render the data on the disk unreadable without overwriting it, but that too sounds implausible.

Thoughts?

I'd rather not fish out a data recovery app and try them for myself, but I guess that's the best way to be sure ..

 

[Fishrrman]

Suggestion:

Go through the disks AGAIN.
This time, erase them to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled (HFS+), and use the "1-pass" secure erase feature.

 

[ZStech]

APFS format drives brings out the best features of the new file system on SSD drives. On old hard drives it is used, though the benefit is small. If you would like to erase the data securely try erasing a volume by changing the format to include encryption, followed up by a second standard erase. You can use the optional encryption format, available when you erase a drive.