A: 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 (an software applications written for these operating systems) cannot send this command, but 4Secure erase can.
Secure Erase sequentially overwrites the data on the drive, similar to 4Secure erase’s other erase modes. However, Secure Erase better handles data on “bad blocks” (single pass may stop and report and error at a bad block).
Secure Erase is implemented on most drives that were manufactured in 2001 or later. However, an estimated time for completion was not added until later. Some drives therefore support Secure Erase but will not give an estimated completion time.