How to use "clean all" on a NAS drive remotely?

[Robert Jenkins]

Hello. I'd like to wipe properly a NAS drive. My only access to it is through the network facility in Windows 11 File Explorer. But I'm able to "be" in it through the Command Prompt, although I can't even use chkdsk on it.

How can I check how it's formatted?

How can I reformat it using its own format?

Thanks for any help.

[Auric__]

I can't help with most of that, especially not in Windows 11, but to wipe it,
you can do the poor man's blank space overwrite. In the command prompt,
change to the root directory of the NAS drive, then:

echo.>a
for /l %a in (1,0,9) do (
copy /Y a + a b
copy /Y b + b a
)

Eventually (it will take some time, depending on network speed, physical disk
read/write speeds, etc.) that will error out (insufficient disk space or
similar). When it does, rename 'a' and 'b' to something else (it doesn't
matter what, 'c' and 'd' are fine, just don't delete them) and then run it
again. Keep doing so until you can't do it any more, then delete all of your
created files. There won't be anything left in the slack space of the drive
that can be recovered without some serious forensic work on the physical
drive itself.

(Of course, if you're connected as a user with a hard data quota, this will
only fill up to your quota allocation and nothing more, and is therefore
useless.)

--
Going to sleep for a million years and no one remembered to
turn off the utilities. Just one more reason to be angry.

[R.Wieser]

Robert,

> Hello. I'd like to wipe properly a NAS drive. My only access to it is
> through
> the network facility in Windows 11 File Explorer. But I'm able to "be" in
> it
> through the Command Prompt, although I can't even use chkdsk on it.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree here, for several reasons :

1) AFAIK support for VBScript was by default disabled as far back as Win 8,
and possibly doesn't even exists anymore under Win 11. Its replaced by
the likes of "powershell"

2) A NAS is a device which supports multiple computers and users thereon,
and as such won't allow a random user to do stuff like formatting its disks
(read: throw everybodies files away).

The acces you described is (most likely) limited to creating/removing files
and folders. For everything else you need to go into the NAS-es
"management console" (normally done by using a webbrowser) and do stuff like
formatting and user management there (authorise a user, allow him to write
as well as read, limit the ammount of space he may use, etc.).

In short : with your limited (non administrator) access you can't do much of
anything at all. *Especially not* stuff that could hurt other users (and
yes, I'm aware you could well be the only user on your NAS, but that does
not change anything in regard to the protections the NAS OS applies).

Bottom line: You need to grab yourself the NAS-es manual and do some
reading. Possibly re-ask you question in the Win 10 or 11 forum,
mentioning the make and model of your NAS.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser