The command will show its progress at the command line. Wait for it to finish—depending on the speed of your drive and the amount of free space to be overwritten, it may take some time. While Windows is restoring itself to factory default settings—in other words, reinstalling Windows—you can have it wipe your system drive. Windows warns you that this process may take hours—as always, it depends on the speed and size of the drive in your computer.
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Now I want to sell it and buy another larger one, so I need to completely and permanently erase all my files on the hard drive so that nobody can recover and see it. I have been researching different methods online but it is a minefield, can anyone help? How to clean a hard drive Windows 10? Cleaning a hard drive is to erase all data stored on the hard drive; it is a great way to free up space on hard drive , or prevent personal data leakage after selling, donating or throwing away it.
You can try the following two methods. Then run the following commands:. Here we select disk 2. This command will format the f drive with the NTFS file system and write zeros to the drive for a single pass. Select the external hard drive or SD card you want to erase data, and select " Erase Sectors " option under Tools menu. Select items to fill disk sectors and click Erase button on the popped-up window. There are four options to fill disk sectors in the drop-down list, i. You can either choose one from "00, FF and Random Data", or specify item to fill disk.
DiskGenius asks confirmation for the action, click Erase button to continue. Since the process wipes data permanently, you should make sure you are erasing correcting disk and important files have been backed up. Step 6. The disk eraser starts wiping data on selected drive and the process may take long time if the disk has very large capacity.
In this example, you can learn how to wipe a computer's main hard drive where Windows is installed. Operating system does not allow to erase system while it is running, and we can only wipe non-system partitions. The following steps show how to reboot computer to WinPE version directly and then erase system disk. Launch the free disk wipe tool DiskGenius from your Windows computer. It takes about two minutes to create booting information for Windows PE, please wait it to complete with patience.
Once the application is ready to reboot, it prompts to restart and backup data. Click " OK " button and computer reboots. Select computer's system hard drive where Windows is installed and click " Erase Sectors " option which can be found under Tools menu. Click Erase button and the software starts wiping the disk. Note: Once the process finishes, the computer cannot boot to system, as system partition have been erased. You need to make a clean system installation on the hard disk.
Case 3: Wipe a single file or folder on hard drive. Erasing an entire hard drive takes too much time, and you don't have to do that if you just want to erase certain existing files on the disk. On account that deleting files by emptying Recycle Bin does not wipe data complete, we should do extra operation to make files unrecoverable. Files deleted in this way cannot be recovered by any recovery software or professionals.
Let's have a close look at how to wipe files and folders:. Launch DiskGenius again, and locate files you want to permanently delete. Select those files and right-click them to choose " Delete Files Permanently ". Click " Permanently Delete " button on the popped-up window. In order to completely delete the file, the application will refill hard drive sectors taken by the file during deletion. By default, it overwrites data by filling zeros which can be modified to random data as well.
Click " Delete " button to confirm the action to be done. Case 4: Erase deleted files only without affecting existing data. Erasing free space on hard drive overwrites lost files, which does not disturb existing files on the disk. This solution applies to those who just want to overwrite lost files only in order to make lost data unrecoverable. Select characters to overwrite disk space and click " Erase " button. The application starts cleaning unused disk space, which takes long time if free space is very larger.
Physically destroying a hard drive is also a solution to ensure data is forever unrecoverable. If you are not going to reuse or recycle your hard drive, you can try this solution to clean data. Use a screwdriver to remove all screws on the hard drive case. Then you'll be able to remove enclosure and the main circuit board.
Remove platters and heads out of hard drive enclosure, and use a hammer to hit platters. Then repeatedly strike other components. Box up all components and throw them to garbage can. This article talks about three methods regarding how to wipe a hard drive, SD card or removable disk, helping to make sure sensitive data can be erased safely and completely.
Files erased by these methods are no longer available for data recovery , thus please make sure important files have been backed up to somewhere else before erasing any storage media. If you feel this article useful, please share it to help more people. If you have better solutions or any questions about this topic, feel free to contact us please.
DiskGenius - A free disk eraser that can permanently wipe a hard drive or SD card sector by sector. DiskGenius is professional data recovery software and it can help you get back lost files or partitions and recover RAW drive with ease. Learn More. Partition Manager.
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