How long to zero wipe a big drive

[JoelJohnson]

I built a FreeNAS system (my first) for a friend using a Dell 1950 server (he got it CHEAP). He is now going in another direction, so he wants the drives wiped. I'm just curious as to how long this will run.

SATA II drives, 750GB, uncoupled from hardware RAID and considered bare disks (now) by FreeNAS. Using zero write wipe, not random data.

Any estimate of timeframe? I know I'm talking hours, but 4 or 24 for each disk? Just looking for someone that has done this before.

TIA,
Joel

 

[no_connection]

Assuming they average around 50MB sec it would take little less than 5 hours.
Less if they are faster.
You can treat it as a transfer as you are writing data.

http://techinternets.com/copy_calc

 

[cyberjock]

It is entirely a function of the size and performance of the disk. Some people can wipe a disk in 30 minutes, others takes hours. You *can* wipe multiple disks simultaneously, so you only need to start all of them and then wait for them all to finish.

 

[JoelJohnson]

And the answer is -- about 50 minutes to zero wipe each 750GB drive. Seagate SATA II, if that matters. I'm going to re-wipe the drives with random data (since the server is going to be just sitting for a few days), and I'll post those results.

 

[cyberjock]

random could easily take days as /dev/random is not very fast at generating data. And if the server is sitting there it will run out of entropy and just stop waiting for more entropy.

SATA2 doesn't matter since platter based drives barely hit SATA 1 speeds with most significantly below SATA1.

 

[no_connection]

That's 250MB/sec average for spinning rust. Which is above SATA 1 speed.
A bit more than I would expect a 750GB drive to do. You sure you wiped the entire drive?

 

[JoelJohnson]

From the GUI, selected the Wipe option from the disk detail screen, picked "Zero wipe" option, and let 'er rip. Time (50 minutes) was approximate (give or take 5 minutes), but there was no error displayed in the GUI. And the time was close to identical for both drives. I am not at the location where the server is, so I cannot check any logs should they exist.

 

[Ericloewe]

That's 250MB/sec average for spinning rust. Which is above SATA 1 speed.
A bit more than I would expect a 750GB drive to do. You sure you wiped the entire drive?

That's more than a Velociraptor does in benchmarks.