Utilities for Erasing A Western Digital Hard Drive

Utilities for Erasing A Western Digital Hard DriveWestern Digital provides softwares that can erase(Low Level Format) all the data on a hard drive. Writing zeros to a hard drive is recommended any time an operating system is to be reinstalled on a boot drive or whenever a blank drive is desired.

1. Erasing WD Internal Hard Drives and Solid State Drives

Internal hard drives and Solid State drives can be erased by these softwares bellow. All these methods require access to your PC (To low level format your drive on a Mac you will need to contact Apple for assistance).

Softwares for Erasing your WD hard drive:

2. Erasing WD External Hard Drives

Western Digital external hard drives only support writing zeros to the drive using the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics utility. In addition, if your drive includes the WD SmartWare software, you have a second option which does not write zeros to the drive, but does fully erase the drive.

Softwares for Erasing your WD hard drive:

Important: If your drive includes a Western Digital Virtual CD-Rom (VCD) drive, this partition will not be removed by performing a low-level format on the hard drive.

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Performing a Low Level Format on a SCSI disk drive

Low Level Format How do I perform a Low Level Format on a SCSI disc drive?

  1. Download and install SeaTools_enterprise software.  Use SCSIMax for Maxtor or Quantum SCSI drives.
  2. Click START | PROGRAMS | SEATOOLS ENTERPRISE to run the program. It will scan any SCSI device(s) installed in the system.
  3. Highlight the drive you would like to format.
  4. Click VIEW | ADVANCED. This will take you to the “Advanced Menu” of the software.
  5. Click ADVANCED | FORMAT. This will bring you to another screen. Click the “Format” tab.
  6. Click the “Format Now” button. You will be prompted to make sure you would like to continue.
    WARNING: All data will be lost!
  7. If you are sure, click “Yes” to continue. If you are not sure, click “No” to exit the utility.
  8. The selected drive will now format and bring your drive back to factory settings.

The advantage to using our low-level routine as opposed to others (such as from SCSI BIOS utilities) is that once you start the routine it can be disrupted at any time. With BIOS utilities, disrupting could damage the drive and render it inoperable. This can also occur from an unexpected power outage.

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