How To Wipe a Hard Drive From the Computer: Simple Steps

It’s common for many users to sell or divulge computers or hard drives once they want to eliminate old devices or upgrade to new ones. You’ll have already formatted the disk drive or deleted files thereon so as to erase sensitive personal data and avoid becoming the victim of fraud. However, the very fact is that wiping out a tough drive isn’t as easy as deleting data or formatting a tough disk. Simply deleting files by Shift + Delete or emptying the Recycle Bin doesn’t permanently clear data, as deleted files can easily be recovered by recovery software. Formatting a tough drive doesn’t completely erase data either. Though the OS cannot see deleted or formatted data and therefore the drive looks empty, average users are ready to revisit lost data easily with the assistance of disk drive recovery software. This article will tell you how to wipe a hard drive from a computer in a detailed manner. so, that no one can use your deleted data for their own good.

Table of Contents

Why deleting and formatting isn’t equivalent to erasing a tough drive?

Are you one among those that hold the view that deleting a file is analogous to erasing it? If yes, you ought to take a fresh look at this issue. We’ll explain the explanations in a detailed and clean manner.

What about disk formatting? Formatting works similarly because it doesn’t wipe data. Formatting a disk or partition seems like tearing the contents of a book without disturbing the actual chapters of the book. Recovery software is additionally ready to retrieve lost files from formatted disks.

How does Wipe hard Drive work?

You may wonder how disk wiping works since deletion and formatting don’t work on a permanently clean disk drive. Aside from physical damage to the disk drive, we will completely remove data with disk wiping technology.

As we’ve mentioned above, to completely erase the disk, we should always remove those binary data, which suggests overwriting those zeros and ones with new data. Once binary data of a file is replaced and overwritten by new data, it can’t be recovered anymore. Some professional disk eraser software is in a position to refill the disk with zeros or random information sector by sector, ensuring no data is often recovered from a wiped disk.

What to do before Wiping Hard drives?

Download and install disk drive wipe software. If you propose to wash a tough disk on your own, a disk wipe tool is important. You ought to select one easy-to-use and effective tool for the task. If you would like to wipe the whole computer, you ought to confirm the software can work on a bootable drive.
Ensure the battery is full. If you would like to wipe a laptop, you ought to confirm the battery is well charged or connected to power. If the facility goes out during disk clearing, it’d spell disaster to the drive.
Back up your data to a special hard disc. Once you wipe your computer, everything thereon is going to be lost, thus you ought to copy any files you would like to stay on a different disk drive. you’ll clone a tough drive or simply copy & paste files thereto disk.
Prepare a bootable disk. If you’re wiping the computer’s main hard disc, you will have to hold out the task without booting the system, like under WinPE. Once everything gets ready, you’ll start erasing the pc hard drives or external disks. The simplest part of this instruction will show you ways to wipe a tough drive, external disk, SD card, or flash drive in several ways.

What Can Happen If Not Reformat Hard Drive?

As the line between the important world and the digital world blurs, it’s smart to know how cybercriminals work. A security product like Norton Security Premium helps protect your PC files, financial information, and your family’s devices. But once you discard your device without properly wiping the disk drive, you run the danger of losing your data.

Cybercriminals value your data — like your email address, passwords, Social Security number, driver’s license details, and MasterCard information. they might sell the knowledge on the dark web.

Cybercriminals can purchase the knowledge and launch cyberattacks to commit other forms of crimes like fraud and extortion. they might open bank accounts in your name, purchase items together with your MasterCard information, or remove loans and default them, leaving you with the results.

Thieves also search for private tips. This might include non-disclosure agreements, personal photographs, private chat conversations, and other details you’ll not want to show.

How To Wipe A Hard Drive?

Follow these steps to make sure you’re truly wiping your disk drive clean. They’ll help keep you from passing on or losing your documents, photos, passwords, financial information, and private data once you say goodbye to your old device.

Step 1: Copy your hard-drive data

Before you wipe your computer’s disk drive or do a factory reset, confirm to copy all of your information to your new computer, an external disk drive, or an internet service.

Backing up your data regularly may be smart work to keep your data safe. But sometimes the Hard drives can malfunction, get misplaced, robbed, or be encrypted by ransomware software and so the data you’re stored in it. The simplest defense is to make sure all the info is protected safely and regularly.

You can copy your data on thumb drives or USB flash drives. But confine in mind these are small storage devices and should not accommodate all the info from your PC. Larget external hard drives offer more storage. you’ll also transfer your data to a different laptop or PC.

“Cloud backs” are an alternative choice. They’re safe and one of the foremost convenient ways to store data. Here’s how it works.

The first thing you have to do is to create an account and complete the initial setup that required the site. Next, you enable the storage of your data to the cloud — a network of remote servers. There’s no visible place for the data you backed up. Therefore the risk of it getting stolen or destroyed by things like floods or fires is mitigated.

Step 2: Don’t just delete files from your computer

You might think moving your documents to the trash or recycle bin and emptying it’ll do the trick. Maybe not. In this post, we are going to explain the way to delete the files, but you often leave them where they were, and choose not to delete them because they are hidden from view. Most of the data recovery programs can easily recover these hidden files.

Data recovery software is capable of rebuilding the file header. This makes it possible for the pc to ascertain the file again.

Step 3: Use a program to wipe your drive

Special software programs can permanently erase your disk drive. There’s little chance you’ll get any data back. Similarly, nobody else is going to be ready to use data recovery software to recover your files.

There are many programs that run a low-level setup that overwrites all the removed files with zeros and other obscure data. This makes it impossible for data recovery software to recover the files.

DBAN may be a free data destruction program that completely erases files on a tough drive that includes all personal files, operating systems, and installed programs.

It would be great to use third-party software to remove your device. Most products offer proof of erasure. This helps when wiping a corporation laptop or PC.

Step 4: Physically wipe your disk drive

As an example, you’ll physically wipe the drive. Just remove your disk drive and take a rare-earth element magnet thereto. Another option? Physically dismantle it with a screwdriver.

A rare-earth element magnet, just like the neodymium magnet, is often wont to deform the metal plates within the hard disc. This makes it unusable.

One warning: The magnets are powerful and may cause physical harm if used incorrectly.

A safer method could be employing a screwdriver to dismantle the pieces of the disk drive to make it useless.

Step 5: Do a fresh installation of the OS

It’s different to completely rewrite the entire disk drive. That’s by completing a clean installation of the first OS that came with the pc. This will be especially important if you’re giving the device to someone sort of a friend or loved one.

Last Words!

Hopefully, the above information helped you well to understand how to wipe a hard drive to save yourself from identity theft. If you are the one who’s gonna sell your PC or laptop and do not want to be a victim of Identity theft then you have to wipe the hard drive of your PC or laptop. And this post will help you with this. Keep every point in mind before reformatting the hard drive.