This behavior surprised me because I assumed 'initialize*, erase, and format were all synonyms. I choose to initialize this time, and suddenly I could erase to various formats with no issues.

all of the above after unplugging the drive various ways.įinally, I rebooted, and when I plugged in the drive again, I was asked to initialize, eject, or ignore.

umount, which gave a 'disk isn't mounted' error, and.

diskutil eraseVolume ExFAT NewName disk2, which gave a 'cannot unmount disk' error,.

By simply deleting files from your hard drive or. Part 3: How to Wipe Partition with BitRaser for File. Formatting a hard drive involves creating a file system that controls how data is stored in the hard drive. After initializing, the Active KillDisk workspace appears with all. For more information, see 'Completely Erasing Unnecessary Data from the Hard Disk. Wiping the logical drives deleted data does not delete existing files and folders. This is effective in preventing data leakage when replacing or disposing the hard disk.

Disk Utility > Erase > ExFAT, which gave a simple 'operation failed' error, Initializing a hard drive involves creating the partition style that defines how the hard disk will store partition data so that the OS knows which sections belong in each partition. With this function, you can completely erase all of the actual data in the hard disk of the machine by overwriting the 0 data or random data.

But even though I had the disk mounted and readable, my attempts to format it failed.

Only after that, my coworker told me that he wanted the disk erased and formatted with a filesystem that he could use on his PC. I ignored it, because I knew I would need to install osxfuse and ext4fuse, which I did, and I was able to read the disk just fine. I plugged it in, and my a dialog asked me to initialize, eject, or ignore. They didn't tell me what they wanted at first, so I assumed I should try to get the data off of it. I was recently handed an old backup hard drive that my co-workers couldn't read because it used one of the EXT file systems.

Will initializing disk erase data