# How Erase Tivo Drive



## paulb7873 (Jan 14, 2015)

What's the best way to erase a TiVo drive. I am moving a 4tb TiVo drive to another DVR and want to erase it and re set it up. I know a secure erase would work but it takes forever! what else could I do? THANK U


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics program has an option when you run the write zeros test that only writes the first and last thousand sectors or so on the drive. That's more than enough to wipe it for a new TiVo and it only takes a few minutes.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

paulb7873 said:


> What's the best way to erase a TiVo drive. I am moving a 4tb TiVo drive to another DVR and want to erase it and re set it up. I know a secure erase would work but it takes forever! what else could I do? THANK U


If you don't really need to erase the whole thing but just wipe out enough from the front that it looks empty to a TiVo or a computer, then the WD utility ggieseke mentioned will work just fine, or if you know what you're doing on a Linux command line, you could use

dd

or one of the fancier replacements for it, like

ddrescue

or

dd_rescue

to write zero from dev/null* to the first Mb or so, and either way, it'll look empty and the process of putting new TiVo software on it will just overwrite anything on there that wasn't erased.

*EDIT

See below where telemark schools me for relying on memory--short version, it's supposed to be /dev/zero.


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## paulb7873 (Jan 14, 2015)

Just did it it worked great. Thank you!


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

unitron said:


> to write zero from dev/null to the first Mb or so, and either way, it'll look empty and the process of putting new TiVo software on it will just overwrite anything on there that wasn't erased.


/dev/null won't give you any data on read. Like getting blood from a stone.

/dev/zero gives you all zero's on read.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

telemark said:


> /dev/null won't give you any data on read. Like getting blood from a stone.
> 
> /dev/zero gives you all zero's on read.


That's what I get for relying on memory for something I have only done infrequently and not at all for a couple of years now.

If I'd had both choices actually in front of me I'd have known instantly which was correct, but I made the mistake of relying on my brain.

Thanks for the correction.


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