shredos - what is the best methods

[gaurav416c-blip]

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Hi,

how are you ?
& I wanto erase my hard drive  completely & if I use Shred OS - what is the best methods & which method should I use because a lot of people are using PRNG Stream but still which method should I use, can tell me because there are so many options & i'm using this software for the 1st time & i don't no which option to use.

Thanku

Gaurav

[xusnitdinov]

Hey Gaurav,

Short version: don't overthink the method. The number of passes matters way less than people assume.

A couple of things to check first though, because the right answer depends on your drive:

• If it's a spinning hard drive (HDD), a single pass is genuinely enough on any modern drive. The old "you need 35 passes (Gutmann)" advice is from the 1990s and doesn't apply anymore. NIST 800-88, which is the current standard people actually follow, treats one overwrite as sufficient. So PRNG Stream (one pass) is totally fine. If you want extra peace of mind, DoD Short (3 passes) is the common "I want to feel safe" choice, but it's not really more secure in practice, just slower.

• If it's an SSD or NVMe drive, this is the important part: overwriting does NOT reliably wipe it. SSDs move data around internally (wear leveling), so an overwrite can leave copies in cells the OS can't even see. For SSDs you want a real secure erase instead: either the drive's built-in ATA Secure Erase / NVMe Format (ShredOS can do this, or hdparm / nvme format from a Linux live USB), or if the drive was encrypted, just wiping the encryption key instantly makes the data unrecoverable.

So my practical recommendation:

• HDD -> PRNG Stream, one pass. Done.
• SSD/NVMe -> use Secure Erase, not an overwrite method.

Hope that helps and saves you a few hours of pointless multi-pass wiping.

[gaurav416c-blip]

ok thanx, I have a Seagate 2 TB external hard drive & I chose PRNG Stream because most of the people chose that option & you are also recommending me to choose this option.

thanx a lot

[xusnitdinov]

Glad it helped!

[gaurav416c-blip]

& how much time should it take to completely erase a 2 TB Hard Drive because i'm using this software for the 1st time & i don't no.

[xusnitdinov]

Depends on the drive speed more than the software.

For a Seagate 2TB external HDD with PRNG Stream (1 pass), ballpark is usually:

• USB 3.0 / decent drive: around 3 to 6 hours
• Slower USB / older drive: 6 to 10+ hours is possible
• Rough math: 2TB ≈ 2000GB. At ~100-150 MB/s sustained write, that’s a few hours for one full pass. External drives are often slower than internal ones, so don’t panic if it’s still going after a few hours.

Leave it plugged in, don’t sleep the PC, and let it finish. If ShredOS shows a progress % / ETA, trust that more than a guess.

[gaurav416c-blip]

ok thanks & my hard drive was erased in 3 day sucessfully

[v-coder247]

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