My laptop died during a secure erase and now I have no free disk space.

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Jesse Wood

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Apr 9, 2013
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10,510
And its making weird noises now and I have no clue how to fix it, I looked up the problem on google and it seems like nobody else made a stupid mistake like me.

I have a windows 8 asus vivobook laptop if that helps. Thanks.

p.s it says I have 2.35 mb left on my drive and I had like 450 before the secure erase.
 
Solution
hang-the-9


A secure erase wipes the drive, and also over-writes it with random characters to make recovery impossible.

You probably ended up wiping the restore partition on the drive, if you can't boot to the recovery partition on the laptop, contact ASUS to get a recovery disk set. What you did will clear the hard drive, but it's not a factory reset, it's just a full drive wipe...
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
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Exactly what "weird noises"? Is it coming from the disk? If yes, replace the drive.

The disk may simply need to get a new partition created on it and formatted for use after the erase. If it crashed in the middle of the wipe, it could have easily damaged the partition information.
 
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fyrye

fyrye

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Jul 1, 2013
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What software did you use to perform the secure erase?
When did you purchase the laptop?

Try performing a low-level format (zerofill) to reset the drive back to factory defaults.
Make sure you have a recovery disk or windows installation disk to use afterwards. Most laptops come installed with a recovery partition instead of sending DVD's/CD's with the system. Otherwise you will not be able to recover the OS after the low-level format.
There are several utilities you can use to reset the disk, most can be obtained from the HDD manufacturer's website.
EG: Seatools from seagate/maxtor. Acronis from WD. KillDisk is another utility you can try to use to low-level format that is not manufacturer specific.

The weird noises are usually the heads inside of the drive resetting quickly as it is failing to read a particular section of the drive. This is otherwise known as the click of death, but can sometimes be recovered from, it is advised to backup immediately and replace the drive upon doing so. Some drives are also known to screech.

It is also likely the drive was about to fail and the secure erase simply caused it to finish failing.
 
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Jesse Wood

Honorable
Apr 9, 2013
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10,510
I used command prompt, I purchased the laptop about 6 months ago I think.

and the noises have gone away recently. It just sounds like regular computer noises.

BTW I was doing the secure erase because I thought it was a way to clear off the hard drive (kinda like a factory reset). Maybe I should do my homework next time before using cleaning utilities haha.
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
60,387
1,081
152,940


A secure erase wipes the drive, and also over-writes it with random characters to make recovery impossible.

You probably ended up wiping the restore partition on the drive, if you can't boot to the recovery partition on the laptop, contact ASUS to get a recovery disk set. What you did will clear the hard drive, but it's not a factory reset, it's just a full drive wipe leaving nothing on the hard drive at all.
 
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