Whenever we have to sell our old Desktop or Laptop to someone, we should always wipe our data from the hard drive. If you don't brush your complex drive data, the data could be recovered using forensic data recovery utility. The other person could possess all your private files; thus, the data breach will compromise your privacy.
You would think that if you format all the drives or delete the partitions, formatting will wipe the data from your hard drive, but in reality, it only deletes the filesystems in your hard drive.
If your current hard drive is entirely cluttered or has some problems and shows your errors, partition errors, or you want to install a new operating system, you would like to take a backup of your data first and then attempt to wipe the hard drive. Now, there are many ways to wipe a hard drive properly in Windows, you could either use the default Windows reset function to wipe out all your data, or you could use a third-party application. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss a few methods to wipe your data from your Hard Drive completely.
Before Wiping The Hard Drive.
There are a couple of things that you need to take care of before you wipe your drive.
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First, you need to ensure that you have copied all the content of the drive to another location, thus avoiding any data loss.
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We would suggest you connect your laptop to power if you are using a laptop to wipe the drive, because some methods may take a long time to complete.
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Any applications or files running from the hard drive, that you want to wipe, should be closed.
Wiping your drive on Windows 11 or 10
There are different ways in which you can format a drive, depending on the type of access you have to your system. Here we have mentioned two of the most common ways of formatting a drive on Windows 11 or 10.
In Windows, you could delete a file or folder. The file or folder will still be present in the Recycle Bin. Even if you have clear the Recycle Bin, the delete-file feature might still hide the files somewhere in the filesystem. Windows don't have any dedicated utility to wipe hard drives; however, we can use the built-in Windows recovery or Reset feature to correctly wipe the hard drive.
1: Using the right-click context menu
This is one of the easiest and the most convenient ways to wipe a hard drive. It just takes a couple of seconds and can be perfect for you if you want to clear up some space for new files on your hard drive.
It has to be mentioned that the following method would only work for the secondary drives on your system and not the boot drive
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To open the Run box, press the Win key + r. Then type ‘explorer’ and hit enter.
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A window titled ‘File Explorer’ opens up. Click on ‘This PC’.
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All the drives should be connected to your PC.
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Then you just need to right-click the drive that you want to wipe and click on ‘Format”
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With a bunch of options, you should see a small ‘Format’ popup open. Click on the ‘Start’ button if you want to do a quick data wipe without messing with other options.
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You will see a message confirming that the wipe is complete. Then, just click ‘OK’ to dismiss the alert.
Now your drive is clean and ready to be used again.
2: Using Disk Management
Just follow the given steps:
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Next, there will be a few options on your screen, like changing the name of the volume, the file systems, and more.
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You should keep the ‘Perform a quick format option' ticked if you do not want to wait for a long time to wipe your drive.
Wiping Your Drive in Windows 8.1
To wipe your drive in Windows 8.1, move to Settings, then Change PC settings, then Update and recovery, then Recovery. Under the section heading Remove everything and reinstall Windows, click the Get Started button.
Then click Next on the next page.
Now you will get the option to clean your drive fully or remove your files. First, choose Fully clean the drive and then click the Reset button.
Now Windows is installed and your PC resets. You will then be placed at the Windows setup screen after your PC reboots. You can go through the setup process if you plan to give or sell your PC or you can just shut it down if you aim to discard the computer.
How to Wipe a Hard Drive Windows using Disk Wipe Utility
A free and minimal application that can permanently wipe all the sensitive data from your hard drive has a simple UI for anyone to start utilizing the application. However, to use the Disk wipe utility, you will require a CD, DVD, or a USB, because disk Wipe comes as an iso, image file, which means we have to burn the file into a USB, CD, or DVD to make it bootable, to use the Disk Wipe utility. Follow the steps mentioned below to know how to use the Disk wipe utility to wipe your hard drive completely.
- Firstly, take a backup of the data you don't want to lose, then download the Disk Wipe utility iso file from the diskwipe.org website. You will also have to download another application like Etcher or Rufus to burn the disk wipe into a USB, CD, or DVD. Just open up Rufus or etcher, select the iso file, select the USB device, and click on the Start or Flash button to make it bootable.
- Once you have your bootable USB, CD, or DVD ready, reboot your PC and press the respective keys for your device to bring the BIOS boot menu. For most devices, it should be F12, F11, or the Esc keys on your keyboard.
- From the BIOS Boot Menu, select your USB device where you have flashed the Disk wipe Utility. Shortly after the disk wipe utility will open, you can inspect all the hard drives available for your PC. Select the industry you want to wipe, select the reformat option from the prompt, select the appropriate option to reformat your device from NTFS, FAT32, and FAT. Then the application will ask you to choose an erasing pattern, like the Random option, if you are not sure about it.
- Also, you could select multiple erasing patterns and continue to wipe your PC hard drive. Depending on the size and erasing method you have chosen, the application will take a while to erase the hard drive, so be patient and let the application do the job. Don't remove the USB during the process.
How to Wipe a Hard Drive Linux
You must already know that Linux is a lot different from the other Operating systems. There can be different means to wipe hard drives in different Linux devices, but there will be a few common options available like:
DD Command
The dd command comes in two forms, in the first option a zero-pass is performed whereas in the second option random ones and zeroes are used. This is very time-consuming, even though it is a lot more secure. Here in the example, “X” has to be replaced with the target drive letter.
Shred Command
Shred Command is another drive clearing method that is built into most Linux systems. It will perform a number of passes of random ones and zeros to wipe your drive. For instance, the first example command will perform the default three passes.
You can simply replace the “Y” in the second example with the desired number to specify a custom number of passes. In this common too, the “X” will be replaced by the target drive letter.
You can now specify a custom number of passes, simply by replacing the “Y” in the second example with the desired number. As with the dd command, the “X” in this example will be replaced by the target drive letter.
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shred -vf /dev/sdX
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shred -n Y -vf /dev/sdX
Third-Party Drive Wipe Options
There are a number of options if you want more control over the drive wipe process or want to wipe a hard disk drive outside of any operating system. There are various third-party software with one particularly famous option named DBAN
DBAN is one of many open-source options for wiping a hard drive. For using DBAN, you will have to mount it to a USB or disk and then boot your computer from that using the BIOS.
This will allow you to wipe a drive without using an operating system at all.
You also get some additional features like PRNG and RCMP which are not available with the operating systems.
Final Thoughts
When you are getting rid of old hardware, it is very important that you make sure all the information is truly gone. Fortunately, most operating systems have a built-in way to do this thus making the process easy and convenient.
