I am trying to securly format a number of drives through a USB interface and this program does not seem to be working.

When I first install the program, all drives on the system are seen, but after I format the first drive and switch the usb to another drive, no drives show in the interface, not even the local hard drive of the pc. Is there a setting I am missing or something I am doing wrong?

First of all: what program???

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Use mhdd with erase feture- data will never be able to rebuilt using that

Using fasterase uses bios function to erase hdd to goverment requirements- but you need to ata lock the drive -> fasterase -> wait for BSY to finish -> then ata unlock. Can take hours todo!

good luck

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I am using the Hard disk low level format tool v2.36 build 1181.

I am looking for a program that I can run from within an OS so that I do not need to constantly power the system on and off to swap drives in order to format a disk.

Like ppumkim said, MHDD is probably the best.
You can also try Secure Erase.

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if using windows 7 pro or higher- you can isntall vm software- and just make it load the iso for mhdd.
i have not tried but maybe it will work in compatibility mode for xp - or even using xp for mhdd and use the erase- but.. to use the fastearse it must be found in bios.
Or- hddscan fior windows of the hdguru site. there is a ERASE function- that fills the drive with zeros' i assume similar to erase in MHDD. but sometimes it just gives BAD BAD BAD..... BAD on usb dirves. even though verify works.... full format in windows will be similar but not guaranteed to compeltely remove all backups and traces of paritions and/or files on the hdd.

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..