If you’re like most people, you probably use a computer to do things like surf the web, email, and work on projects. But sometimes you need to clean the hard drive in order to get it back to its original condition. There are a few things you can do in order to speed up this process:

  1. Make sure your computer is turned off and your disk is unplugged.
  2. Remove any programs that are using the disk space.
  3. Use a vacuum cleaner or a bucket to suck all of the dust and dirt off of the disk surface.
  4. Use a soft cloth or paper towel to dry the disk surface completely before putting it back into its case or storage container.

The process of securely overwriting a large disk is a lengthy one; can the process be expedited?

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

The Question

SuperUser reader John wants to know if there is anyway to speed up the disk wipe he’s performing:

Is there anyway to for John to speed the process up?

I’m on Mavericks/10.9.

The Answer

SuperUser contributor Hennes writes:

Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

Assuming you have USB 2 and a reasonably good performance of 30-35MB/sec. (this is about the max write speed for USB 2)

That is a long time. And speeds can differ somewhat. In your case it seems four times as slow. Decidedly not fast, but well within reasonably speeds. Especially if there are other USB devices busy on the same USB controller.

There are at least three ways to deal with this:

Wait a long time. Use a faster bus to the disk (e. g. an eSATA enclosure. Or mount the disk internally) Do not send any data to the drive to wipe it. Instead tell the drive to wipe itself. Useful for this: DBAN and secure erase.