Erase Hard Drive
Other Parameters

6.2 Other Parameters

Other parameters allow you to turn features on or off or to change default settings when you are erasing data or wiping data from unoccupied space.

6.2.1 Verification

After erasing is complete you can direct the software to perform verification of the surface on the drive to be sure that the last overwriting pass was performed properly and data residing on the drive matches the data written by the erasing process. Because verification is a long process, you may specify a percentage of the surface to be verified. You may also turn the verification off completely.

6.2.2 Retry Attempts

If an error is encountered while writing data onto the drive (for example, due to physical damage on the drive's surface), Active@ KillDisk tries to perform the write operation again. You can specify number of retries to be performed.

Sometimes, if the drive surface is not completely damaged, a damaged sector can be overwritten after several retries.

6.2.3 Ignore Errors

If this option is turned on, error messages will not be displayed while data erasing or verification is in progress.

When ignore error messages is turned on, all information about these errors is written to the KILLDISK.LOG file. These messages are displayed after the process is complete in the final Erasing Report.

6.2.4 Clear Log File before Start

If this option is turned on,KILLDISK.LOG log file will be truncated before erasing starts. After erasing is completed, the log file will contain information only about the last session. If this option is turned off, KILLDISK.LOG log file will not be truncated and information about the last erasing session is appended to the end of the file.

6.2.5 Skip Confirmation

The confirmation screen is the final step before either erasing or wiping data. In this red-colored screen, you type ERASE-ALL-DATA or WIPE-ALL-DATA to confirm what is about to happen. If Skip Confirmation is turned on, this final safety request does not appear. This option is typically to be used with caution by advanced users in order to speed up the process.

It is safer to run KillDisk with this option selected (default state). You may want to use this as a safety buffer to ensure that data from the correct drive location is going to be erased completely with no possibility of future data recovery.

6.2.6 Wipe out Deleted/Unused data

This parameter appears only when you are wiping data from unused space on the hard drive. The wiping process clears data residue from unoccupied space on the hard drive and does not affect installed applications or existing data. This process contains three options. Select the parameter and press [Enter] to choose from the list of options:

• Wipe unused clusters
• Wipe unused space in MFT/Root area
• Wipe slack space in file clusters

You may choose to run only one or two of these options in order to make the process complete more quickly. If you want a thorough wiping of unused space, then include all of the options.