LowLevelFormat - Does exactly what you need, and provides good information on their website I have never used this software, and probably will not be able to help you with it, however it was recommended to me, so I felt I should include it. IT WILL NOT WRITE PROPERLY/COMPLETELY, AND COULD DAMAGE THE DRIVE. WARNING! DO NOT USE DBAN ON A SOLID STATE DRIVE.

Western Digital's Data LifeGuard Use Only As A Last Resort:įollow the instructions to install this onto either a cd-r or a pen-drive remove any usb, cd's, or drives you don't want to be overwritten, then restart your computer with the pen drive/cd-r in it (do this on a computer you will not use for a while). There are many tools to do this (note that with a 3TB drive it could take weeks), however definitely try using Western Digitals' program to do this first before trying others (then you can blame them if something happens :P ) This will delete ALL formatting and ALL data on the drive. If that doesn't work, you will have to do what is called a 'zero write' or 'low-level formatting', and then reformat the drive using the above software.Ī zero write takes an extremely long time especially on a 3TB drive (try 12 hours for 350GB! I recommend trying to format it via WD's software FIRST it writes over your entire hard drive with zeroes, effectively deleting ALL the information on the drive.

After you've backed up your drive, you'll want to try Western Digitals Formatting Program to reformat the drive. First, I would make a backup of everything on the drive that you don't want to lose.

How to reformat wd elements for mac