I have Acronis Disk Director which has the ability to wipe a single partition, or entire unpartitioned drive, only if it is unallocated.

If a hard drive has been used and has data on it, I know how to format it. I also know that this does not delete the data.

I'm a bit confused. How do you "unallocate" a hard drive once it's been used?

What exactly is an unallocated drive or partition?

I heard that Active Kill Disk will wipe any drive and delete partitions no matter what. But I do use Disk Director, and would like to understand the issue I raise above, and use it's wipe function.

BTW, I am not trying to wipe my primary drive, so I don't need a boot disk. I want to wipe another internal drive (outside my PC) using an external USB adapter.

Thanks

Unallocated space is a quantity of the hard drive which has not been formatted. Simply formatting that external drive should do the trick. If you are concerned about soemone using advanced techniques to find data then you can wipe it first then format it.

Sorry NK. I'm confused here.

Disk Director will only wipe unallocated space. If the drive has been formatted, it will not allow a wipe.

If data has been on the drive, doesn't that make it "allocated"?

If so, how do you get a used drive to have unallocated space so it can be wiped?

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the definition of these terms...

I'm pretty sure that deleting the partitions removes the allocation information as well, thus your tool's advanced wipe functions should work for you after that.

I'm surprised the program doesn't come with a clear set of instructions for:

1) wiping a drive that has already been partitioned/allocated

2) wiping a drive with no current allocations

Page 51 of the Acronis Disk Director 10.0 manual indicates that you can delete a partition and wipe the data all in one operation.

http://us1.download.acronis.com/sl/x8rz3jb0QOV6NisYOe3zd8KWhztQIZJOLVfJPjwks%298/p/pdf/DiskDirectorSuite10.0_ug.en.pdf

Page 54 has more information of interest on the topic.

Sorry NK. I'm confused here.

Disk Director will only wipe unallocated space. If the drive has been formatted, it will not allow a wipe.
Then there is something wrong with that program. I have erased/wiped hard drives regardless of data or unallocated space, as long as the computer gives the volume a drive letter. Here are some other free program recommendations: Best Free Secure Erase Utility (http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-secure-erase-utility.htm)

JB: Thanks for looking up that info and posing the User's Guide.

It is on my CD as well. After re-reading it (pages 51 & 54), it still only seems to give you 2 choices:
- Delete partitions and wipe drive
- Wipe unallocated space

So I guess I'm back to my original question. How do you wipe a drive that has no partitions, but has data on it?

If it has data on it, or has been formatted, does that mean it is "allocated" space and cannot be wiped?

If so, how do you "Unallocate an entire drive that has no partitions?

On page 54, they mention "clearing" vs wiping. But they do not define "clearing" a disk. What is clearing?

Can you please tell me the difference between allocated and unallocated space?

Sorry for all the questions. I think this is partially a case of me not fully understanding the terminology here.

NK: Thanks for the article. Someone on this forum recently suggested Active KillDisk. After reading about it, it sounds like a great application. Nothing stops it. It will wipe through anything and do an entire disk, patitions not withstanding, (including external USBs which is what I want to do).

I was planning to download it, but always try to minimize the number of programs I have. I'm confused enough already with all the various things I've downloaded over the years. Fortunately, I keep good notes on how to use things.

Since I rarely have the need to wipe anything, I just figured that if I already have a program (Disk Director) that can do a full disk wipe, and all I have to do if figure out how to operate it, then I'd be better off leaning that, than downloading another program.

Would really appreciate some mentoring here on this topic.

Thank you both...

Sorry mate, I rarely buy a program when a great free utility is available to do the job.
So let's step back: as I understand it you have an internal hard drive in a USB enclosure acting as an external drive and you'd like to wipe that drive and make it available for use. Is this correct?

When you plug in the drive does Windows pick it up and assign it a drive letter?
Does it assign it just one letter or more?
Does that drive letter (or letters) account for the entire size of the hard drive?

Basically if you can see it you can wipe it and format it.

NK:

I still haven't quite figured out how to do quotes on this forum, so I'll just answer your questions.

1) I have a 160GB HD from another PC that I would like to wipe and install in another PC.

2) It is not actually in an external enclosure, but close. I have an external USB adapter cable that has a 3 way connector to plug into IDE, SATA or 2.5" drives.

3) I plugged it in to my PC and went to disk management. It shows up as Drive 1 (my internal drive is there as Drive 0 of course). There is one assigned drive letter.

4) There are no partitions on drive 1 (ext USB).

5) The size of the drive is showing up at about 149GB (160GB drive). I know that this is not uncommon. (I never actually knew what is on a drive that uses up some space).

Thanks...

First I just wanted to say Hi. Haven't seen you for a bit.

I'm a little on the confused side here.


If a hard drive has been used and has data on it, I know how to format it. I also know that this does not delete the data.

This isn't true. A format does delete data. You can right-click on something to find the format. For an entire hard drive, you may need to use the disk management.

However, I am wondering if you are trying to do a complete erase of the drive. Deleting junk doesn't truly wipe everything on the drive, but there are programs that will do so. Is that what you are trying to do? Cause that would make better sense out of what you're saying. Although that does make me wonder why you want/need to do this?


So I guess I'm back to my original question. How do you wipe a drive that has no partitions, but has data on it?

But it does have a partition. One. Perhaps that's where the confusion is? I suspect the first command will work for you. Assuming you can point it to the other hard drive and not the one you're using. (Since it's a separate hard drive I would hope so, but my hopes won't help you if it destroys the one you're using.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go to JB's link and see if I can find what it's calling a wipe versus a clean.

Um, well never mind, cause the link is giving me an error.

As for that quoting, didn't I explain this once? ;) If you want to quote the entire message, just click on the Quote button on that particular thread instead of going to the bottom and just answering.

If you're trying to quote in between various text (like I'm doing in this thread), probably the easiest way if you're not understanding it, is to highlight the whole post (or the part that includes what you want), then copy it into the reply box. That method doesn't include any "auto quoting" and leaves it for you to do. Delete the parts you don't want. Then to quote one part, highlight over that part and click on the icon to the far right that looks sort of like a piece of paper and sort of like one of those bubbles used for speech in a cartoon. (It's on the far right in the regular view, not if you go into advanced view.) You'll see the quote tags in front and in back of what you highlighted. Then space down and type under it. Then do the same to the next section, etc.

If you want to see that it looks all proper-like, then click advanced and you'll get your preview and can fix any mess-ups from there. (Preview is your friend.) Just try it once with my thread. :D (Otherwise I'm going to find out where you live and come smack you upside the head.)

3) I plugged it in to my PC and went to disk management. It shows up as Drive 1 (my internal drive is there as Drive 0 of course). There is one assigned drive letter.

4) There are no partitions on drive 1 (ext USB).

5) The size of the drive is showing up at about 149GB (160GB drive). I know that this is not uncommon. (I never actually knew what is on a drive that uses up some space).

Thanks...Then it's really simple. Stay in Disk Management, right-click on that drive letter and select Format. Once it's finished formatting you can slap it into the other PC and start using it. If you want to wipe the drive clean so that no data can evr be recovered do the wipe first then do the format. If it's for your own personal use then a simple format as described above is fine.

Hey Morgaine. Good to hear from you as well.

I think my original question has grown as I have tried to respond to others above that were helping me.

If you look at my original positing in 1/2/10, it pretty much says it all, and explains what I am trying to do.

I have been told that formatting a drive does not erase the data, but rather codes it as able to be over written. This is why there are programs that can retrieve data from a formatted disk. Perhaps I misunderstood this.

BTW, I'm not trying to wipe anything on my primary drive! Just an external drive through a USB port

I basically have 4 related questions (as in original post). At this point, I don't need to wipe anything. I used a hammer and did it the old fashioned way. I just want to learn and understand this stuff for future use. Again, I know there are other programs that will wipe a drive regardless of what is on it, including partitions (Active KillDisk), but I would prefer not to add programs that I would almost never use, and just understand how to use the one I have (Disk Director). The User's Manual does not address this.

1) I use Acronis Disk Director, which has a wipe function. It will not wipe a drive or partition that has data on it. The wipe button is grayed out. Even if I format a drive or partition, it will not wipe. It will only wipe unallocated space. Why?

2) So, that created the 2nd question, what the heck is unallocated space? I have googled it and can't get a clear and simple answer. Just that it is space with nothing on it. So what is the difference between formatted space and unallocated space?

3) If Disk Director will only wipe unallocated space, how do you make a drive unallocated? In post #5, JB points out that Disk Director will delete a partition, and wipe the drive in one step. This is true, but what if you have a drive with a single partition? It won't wipe it.

4) An finally, What is the difference between wiping a drive, and clearing a drive? This is an option on page 55 of the User's Guide: Backup software for data backup and disaster recovery in Windows and Linux - Acronis (http://us1.download.acronis.com/sl/x...10.0_ug.en.pdf)

Thanks Morgaine...

PS: Is there a small partition on a completely fresh drive that is needed for the drive to function. I cannot remember the acronim I heard (something like MTB?? ). If so will wiping the drive delete this information? And will formatting put it back?

Hey NK,

Your answer is simple. Unfortunately, I cannot get Disk Director to wipe a drive unless it is "unallocated space".

I tried formatting 1st, but it did not show as unallocated, so I couldn't wipe it.

I am still hoping for a clear definition (That I can understand) for "unallocated"

(I had an old drive with a single partition that was totally unallocated (per disk management). No problem wiping it.)

Thanks...

Morgaine, for some reason the link to the user's manual is not working?? Sorry.

Here is an excerpt from the user's guide of what I was talking about (and what JB was referring to):

4.1.13 Wiping unallocated hard disk space
PC hard disks can contain a substantial amount of confidential information. Often users forget that private information must be completely destroyed to avoid unauthorized access to it — simply deleting an old file is not sufficient. Windows tools do not guarantee data destruction. Deleted files can be restored easily. Formatting and even deleting a partition leaves hard disk sector contents the same. Acronis Disk Director Suite offers a simple but reliable algorithm for wiping hard disk unallocated space. If you need to wipe unallocated disk space: 1. Select a hard disk and unallocated space in the Acronis Disk Director Suite main window — Wipe unallocated space becomes available on the toolbar.

Manual Partition Operations

2. Select Disk  Wipe or a similar item in the Operations sidebar list, or click Wipe the selected unallocated space on the toolbar. 3. In the Wipe Unallocated Space window, enter a number of disk passes (up to 99),
For information about the Acronis Disk Director Suite data wiping algorithm see the commentary for 4.1.10 «Deleting a partition». Hard disk passes number window 4. By clicking OK, you'll add a pending operation of unallocated disk space wiping.
4.1.14 Clearing a hard disk
Acronis Disk Director Suite lets you clear not only unallocated disk space, but an entire disk as well. If you need to clear the entire hard disk: 1. Select a hard disk on the Tree View panel of Acronis Disk Director Suite — Clear the current hard disk drive button becomes available on the toolbar (if there is no Tree View panel in the main window, show it by selecting View  Tree View). 2. Select Disk  Clear or a similar item in the Operations sidebar list, or click Clear the current hard disk drive on the toolbar. 3. Select the clearing method in the Clear Hard Drive window; you can: (1) just delete hard disk partitions (without wiping disk sectors) — set the switch to Delete partitions. (2) delete hard disk partitions and fully clear hard disk sectors — set the switch to Delete partitions and destroy data. Having set the switch to Delete partitions and destroy data, enter the number of passes for wiping.

Since I don't know the Acronis product and I can perform the tasks with other programs or within Windows itself I will bow out and leave to the people who know Disk Director.

NK, Fair enough.

You know, it is entirely possible, that I did something wrong, when trying to wipe a formatted drive, and that it will actually wipe. I don't have an extra drive right now to try it.

Can you give me an explanation of "unallocated space" and how that differs from Formatted space?

Unallocated space is basically space that isn't in a partition. If you delete the partitions from the drive, it should show everything on the drive as unallocated space.

When wiping a drive, I prefer to use Derik's Boot and Nuke (http://www.dban.org). Failing the Acronis product, you can try that. I've only really used it on a machine before I've taken the hard drive out, but there is a menu to choose the drive you want to wipe, and what level of security you want by using it. It's a bootable disc that runs on some flavor of linux, detects your drives, offers up the menu, then overwrites the entire hard drive to destroy the data. And it's free.

Retso...

Thanks for the explanation.

One of my PC's has no partitions. It's just one big C drive.

When I look at it in disk management, it does not say unallocated. It is identified as healthy NTFS.

Can you help me understand why it is not unallocated, based on your first statement above?

Thank you...

Shot in the dark here... any chance that this external USB drive has some sort of "lock" that is telling the software to not allow reformatting? My little USB drives have them... why not the big ones.

Just a thought.

I just bought a 250GB full size internal IDE drive for my wife's old Dell PC. Her puny 40GB is barely functional anymore.

I assume the new drive comes formatted. I wonder if that means it is unallocated as well??

Before I clone over her old drive, I suppose that I can try to wipe the new one. There is nothing on it, right?

JB, My Acronis Disk Director is one thing I'll figure out eventually, but I've been asking the same question throughout this posting, and I'm still not clear on one thing (I'm probably driving all you good people crazy by now).

I don't understand exactly what conditions create an unallocated space. Can you please take a stab at explaining this to me?

BTW, I think you absolutely hit on what may have been the problem that sent me down the garden path. It WAS a mini backup USB drive that I was trying to wipe. I found out from WD that they have hidden and protected partitions, as well as firmware built into the drive itself that controls access to the disk. As you suggest, that is most likely why I couldn't wipe it.

I have since wiped an internal drive using an external USB adapter, BUT, the drive was showing as unallocated in disk management. I'm still not sure I can wipe a drive with Disk Director if it's allocated (whatever that means).

Thanks for all you help...

If you look at my original positing in 1/2/10, it pretty much says it all, and explains what I am trying to do.

No, actually it doesn't, because I think we have some vocabulary problems. That is, you might know what you mean, but I've never gotten a distinction on what exactly you were trying to do.


I have been told that formatting a drive does not erase the data, but rather codes it as able to be over written. This is why there are programs that can retrieve data from a formatted disk. Perhaps I misunderstood this.

If you do a format in Windows, you get a message saying that it will "erase" all the data on the drive. Again, vocabulary issues. The vast majority of the time when someone is speaking of erasing data or deleting data, they're meaning exactly what this is referring to - it makes the space available to you. It does not "destroy" everything. (Destroy is a good term.) I don't know the official terms for the two, if there are any. Even if there are any, I'm sure an awful lot of people use them wrong, which is why you have to be clear. (That's why I wasn't quite sure what you were wanting to do, or why.)

So let's call "erase" the typical usage and typical thing we do all the time - just getting rid of stuff to be written over. And "destroy" will be to absolute get rid of everything, completely destroyed, can't get it back, and what you'd want to do if you had sensitive info that could be gotten back.

It sounds like you want to destroy everything. I'm trying to figure out why. I've only ever done that twice. Once was when I got a new hard drive to use for those images I do, and something got read incorrectly on the drive when I put it in and wouldn't read. So it was suggested I "destroy" everything. That worked. The other time when when I had a virus, and formatting everything and reinstalling Windows did not get rid of it. So I destroyed everything and even made the partitions a different size. That worked, so something was hiding somewhere that a typical format didn't get rid of.

Normally I just format the thing. It sounds like you're just moving things around and not sure why you find it necessary to destroy everything, unless of course the BIOS or Windows is having trouble with it.


I basically have 4 related questions (as in original post). At this point, I don't need to wipe anything. I used a hammer and did it the old fashioned way.

Are you serious? Oooohhh... are you tossing this drive? Is that why you're so concerned about really destroying everything? I certainly didn't get that out of what you said - thought you moved it from one computer to another. Throwing away a perfectly good hard drive. Aak! I can't handle tossing parts - gives me the shivers.


and just understand how to use the one I have (Disk Director).

Um... apparently not?


1) I use Acronis Disk Director, which has a wipe function. It will not wipe a drive or partition that has data on it. The wipe button is grayed out. Even if I format a drive or partition, it will not wipe. It will only wipe unallocated space. Why?

Don't know. Just sounds like the way they made that option. Since clear will delete partitions, I don't know why wipe can't.


2) So, that created the 2nd question, what the heck is unallocated space? I have googled it and can't get a clear and simple answer. Just that it is space with nothing on it. So what is the difference between formatted space and unallocated space?

They aren't directly related. Formatted "prepares" the space for usage. I'd assume most, if not all, new drives are already formatted. Years ago, floppies weren't - you had to format them before use. But you only have to do it once, though formatting is used as a quickie erase instead of manually deleting everything. You'd also have to do it again if you want a different file system.

MY understanding of unallocated (which may be incorrect) is that you haven't made a partition yet. Even with only one bootable partition, you have to still tell it to make it a logical partition, make it active, etc. (This is assuming it wasn't done at some point - if something had Windows on there, that was already done. And an XP disk might do it automagically, I don't know.)

Like I can say make 10% of this thing my logical partition (where you'd put C), and then tell it nothing about the other 90% and that 90% is still unallocated. In disk management it would be like gray. What you should see now is a colored box around the whole thing.

Oh, well, I'm thinking of Partition Magic, sorry. My logical drive doesn't have a box around it. But the bar across the top is a darker blue. Then the extended partition (where D - K are) has a green box around it, so it's separated as the extended partition. Then small gray boxes inside that for the partitions, and those have a lighter blue strip across the top. My second hard drive is all green cause it's all an extended partition -- it's not bootable and has no OS on it. All the partition boxes say stuff in them. If there were unallocated space, it would be separated and not say anything. In Partition Magic it's gray - don't know what it is in Disk Management cause I don't really use that much except to rename drives.


3) If Disk Director will only wipe unallocated space, how do you make a drive unallocated?

Jeez, I haven't done that in so long... I'm thinking Disk Management will do it. Years ago I got used to using fdisk for everything (DOS thing), and now I use Partition Magic for everything. Maybe the Delete? Not sure if that kind of formats it or actually dumps the partition. Not like I'm going to try it. ;)


In post #5, JB points out that Disk Director will delete a partition, and wipe the drive in one step. This is true, but what if you have a drive with a single partition? It won't wipe it.

It won't? That is just darn weird. Or was that part of that USB whatever it was you did problem?


4) An finally, What is the difference between wiping a drive, and clearing a drive? This is an option on page 55 of the User's Guide: Backup software for data backup and disaster recovery in Windows and Linux - Acronis (http://us1.download.acronis.com/sl/x...10.0_ug.en.pdf)

Well, it's clear to me that the "wipe" is what I was calling destroying. Having a hard time following the clear thing. Kind of sounds like what you'd use if you need to do a full drive with more than one partition, or perhaps even only one partition that's allocated. It does sound like it'll unallocated it (delete a partition). And it's giving you more choices, like just delete the partition, or delete and wipe. Is this what won't work with only one partition? Just don't see the logic there.


PS: Is there a small partition on a completely fresh drive that is needed for the drive to function. I cannot remember the acronim I heard (something like MTB?? ). If so will wiping the drive delete this information? And will formatting put it back?

I'm not quite positive what you are referring to. I don't know the technicalities behind this. I just know formatting prepares it to store data. I also know there's stuff taking up some space at the beginning, like the boot sector -- oh, you're talking about the MBS, master boot sector. AFAIK, wiping it would dump that too, yes. I'm not sure of the technicalities behind formatting, but... I think I can safely say it wouldn't put that type of thing on there. Partly cause I use it all the time just to delete junk and it's not going around changing boot sectors and such, just deleting stuff. Plus drives can be used for different things - my second hard drive, for instance, isn't bootable.

You know, it just struck me. The two times I had to destroy the entire drive, I didn't do anything special - I popped in the XP disk and followed the instructions. So perhaps it does do it all automagically. So that people like me forget how. :rolleyes: I used to do it with fdisk (from a bootable floppy).

Oops, didn't realize this had gotten so long.

Good Morning Morgaine,

I can't thank you enough for taking all the time to answer my questions. In reading your post, I am realizing that my original "simple" questions have grown into some sort of monster here.

Frankly, I'm not even sure what I want to know anymore.

Seems to me, I may have been combining several "related" but different questions into one post. Made it complicated and confusing for all, including me. Sorry about that.

To ease your mind, the HDD that I trashed was going bad. Bad sectors and really noisy bearings. So please don't mourn it's passing.

Yes, I may have had problems wiping a drive because it was protected. I don't even remember which drive it was any more.

Finally, in all these discussions, I realized that I needed clarification on terminology. That is what all the questions were about formatting vs unallocated. Perhaps Disk Director will wipe an allocated space. I don't have an extra HDD right now to try it.

I do remember once seeing in disk management, a hard drive that had 2 partitions, and one was unallocated.

BTW, the acronym I was trying to think of was MFT, master file table.

I am going to give this topic (and my brain) a rest. If I can get my hands on an extra HDD, I will play around with Disk Director and try to figure out how it works, and what their terms mean, like wipe vs clear.

Thanks again to all for your feedback... MSC

I can't thank you enough for taking all the time to answer my questions. In reading your post, I am realizing that my original "simple" questions have grown into some sort of monster here.

Don't let the kids know there's really monsters hiding under the bed.


Seems to me, I may have been combining several "related" but different questions into one post. Made it complicated and confusing for all, including me. Sorry about that.

Oh, don't apologize. It does get like that. I have a concept, but certainly no thorough understanding, cause it's all a little weird.


To ease your mind, the HDD that I trashed was going bad. Bad sectors and really noisy bearings. So please don't mourn it's passing.

Oh, well, that's OK then. Not worth trying to use it anyway. (Although I have a very old one that I can't part with, simply cause it's a Western Digital & it's just not fair for it to have bad sectors.)


I am going to give this topic (and my brain) a rest.

Sounds good. You can only tax your brain so long. (And I don't know about you, but mine's asleep at the moment.)

I'm sure I'll you around. :D