Can I Safely Cancel Disk Erase in Disk Utilities

Question

Can I Safely Cancel Disk Erase in Disk Utilities

I accidentally started using the "8 Way Random Write Format" in disk utility to erase my 160 GB hard drive, and it looks like it will take at least three days to complete.

Does anyone know if I can safely cancel the erase and use normal erase mode instead?

The system gives me a warning that the disk may be made unusable if some functions are stopped early, but I would think that would apply more to removable media... I just don't want to risk it, but 3-4 days, Wow!

Thanks for your help!

Power PC G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9) Dual 1.8 GHz CPU, 3 GB DDR SDRAM

Posted on Dec 18, 2006 1:00 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 18, 2006 3:10 PM in response to globalwarming

Hello! Interrupting the process MAY render the disk unusable but I've done it and got away with it but it also required another reformat. It shouldn't take 3 days unless the disk is bad. Tom

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Answer 2

eww

Level 9

53,052 points

Dec 18, 2006 6:46 PM in response to globalwarming

Hi, global. It could easily take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour per 10GB of hard drive capacity to write zeroes to your whole drive once, if the drive is in good working order. Multiply that by eight times, and you might very well have several days to wait for completion of the process. Unless you're extremely concerned about wiping the drive so thoroughly that no one outside of the NSA can get anything off it, you don't need to go to that extreme. Writing zeros once will keep your data safe from most people's prying. Go ahead and interrupt the process, then repeat the initialization using whichever option your needs really require.

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