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Protecting Your Digital Assets
TM
CRU WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra User Manual
4. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)
HOW DOES SECURE ERASE WORK?
Secure Erase is a feature on many modern hard drives (greater than 15GB). This feature is activated by a
low level command to the drive and causes the drive to erase itself using methods developed by the drive
manufacturers in conjunction with the NSA. To protect against malware attacks, operating systems such as
Windows and Mac OS (and software applications written for these operating systems) cannot send this
command, but Drive eRazer Ultra can.
Secure Erase sequentially overwrites the data on the drive, similar to the Drive eRazer Ultra unit’s other
erase modes. However, Secure Erase better handles data on “bad blocks” (single pass may stop and report
an error at a bad block).
Secure Erase is implemented on most drives that were manufactured in 2001 or later. However, an esti
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mated time for completion was not added until later. Some drives therefore support Secure Erase but will
not give an estimated completion time.
HOW FAST WILL MY DRIVE ERAZER ULTRA ERASE THE DATA ON A HARD DRIVE?
The Drive eRazer Ultra can erase modern hard drives at up to 7GB/minute or more. The erasure time
depends on several factors. Older drives will generally take longer than newer ones. Higher levels of verifica
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tion will not affect the time spent erasing, but will make the total process take longer. Finally, the erase
mode plays a role. Quick Erase will generally finish a little faster than Secure Erase.
WITH WHAT DRIVE CAPACITIES IS DRIVE ERAZER COMPATIBLE?
The Drive eRazer Ultra cannot erase extremely small drives or media that are less than 10,000 sectors.
Assuming a 512 byte sector size, 10,000 sectors is less than 5MB. There is currently no known limit to how
large of a disk Drive eRazer Ultra will erase. As of April 2015 the Drive eRazer Ultra has been tested with up
to 6TB hard drives. We have no reason to believe that the Drive eRazer Ultra will not continue to work with
newer and larger drive sizes as they are released.
DO I HAVE TO JUMPER MY IDE DRIVE TO A PARTICULAR SETTING?
We recommend that you jumper your IDE/PATA hard drives to a Master setting. Some hard drives have two
different Master settings: one for when there is a slave drive present and one for when there is no slave
drive present. Choose the setting for No Slave present. There may be some drives that will not work with
either of these settings. The next choice is Cable Select. If this does not work, try using
no
jumpers. This
may be the same as “Master with No Slave present”.
WHAT KIND OF PRINTER SHOULD I USE WITH THE DRIVE ERAZER ULTRA?
The Drive eRazer Ultra was tested primarily with Zebra brand printers compatible with ZPL II formatted
text (often indicated by –Z at the end of the model number). During development we made every effort to
make this feature as compatible as possible, but no list of compatible printers is currently being published. If
choosing a new printer, the Zebra product line is a good starting point. Feel free to contact CRU Support for
up-to-date information about Drive eRazer Ultra and serial printers.
