How to erase a hard drive windows 7

How to Secure Erase Hard Drive in Windows 7, 8, 10?

When you want to secure erase hard drive Windows 7, you can try the AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, which can securely erase all data on your hard disk drive or solid-state drive in Windows 7/8/10.

By Cherry / Last Updated September 27, 2020

Scenario

“Recently, I’m planning to change my old 1TB hard drive to a 2TB hard drive. I have deleted all data on the hard drive, but I heard it is not enough if I want to reuse or sell it — it is not safe for my personal information, and the next user may use some data recovery tool to steal my private data. So, I need to secure erase hard drive in Windows 7 and wipe all data securely and permanently that nobody can restore data back. Does anybody know how to do it in Windows 7? Thanks”

It is important to erase your personal data from the hard drive before you dispose of them. Windows erasing hard drive is not as same as simply deleting or formatting hard drive. Here, you can learn how to do it easily.

Erase hard drive with a hidden Windows 7 tool

It is always a worry when you throw away your computer or hard drive that all personal data on the hard drive could be recovered via some data recovery tool. Thus, securely erasing hard drive is of great importance. Well, Windows 7 actually has its own free built-in tool for securely erasing, not just whole hard disks, but specific folders as well. Microsoft says this feature is here for cleaning empty folders and drives that need to be erased.

That is the cipher.exe tool, which has been around for years and is used to manage the EFS (Encrypted File System) feature that preceded BitLocker. Run cipher.exe from Command Prompt as an Administrator. Type “cipher /w /?” to displays or alters the encryption of directories [files] on NTFS partitions. Type cipher “w:x:\folder” (x:\folder for the location you want to wiped). It will write a series of 0s, 1s and then random characters to every sector of the drive or folder to erase all data securely. After that, you are not going to get your data back.

Secure erase hard drive in Windows 7 with GUI tool

Using the command line to execute tasks has a potential risk: the operation is irrevocable. Once there is a wrong operation, it could cause irretrievable damage. Fortunately, there is some software with an intuitive user interface, with which you can securely erase the hard drive in Windows 7. The AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is a nice recommendation.

Secure Download

It provides you the specific methods for wiping hard disk drive (HDD) and erasing SSD securely. Because of the different constructions of HDD and SSD, you can’t use the same way to use HDD to SSD. Here you can learn how to secure erase hard drive (both HDD and SSD) in Windows 7/8/10.

Note: Wipe hard drive clean would delete all partitions and erase all data on the selected hard drive by overwriting it. If there is anything important, backup to cloud or external.

1. Wipe hard drive(HDD) permanently

To secure erase hard disk drive in Windows 7 permanently, you can try the “Wipe Hard Drive”. Follow the steps below to do that:

Step 1. Connect your hard drive to your Windows 7 computer (Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 is also supported by AOMEI Partition Assistant).

Step 2. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. It will detect all hard drives on your computer and you can see all drives on the main interface. Right-click the hard drive you want to erase securely, select «Wipe Hard Drive».

Step 3. Here you can choose a proper way to wipe the selected hard drive.

Step 4. When you back to the main interface, click «Apply» to submit the pending operation.

2. Secure erase SSD

If your hard drive is a solid-state drive (SSD), use the “Secure Erase SSD” feature instead. This feature is only available in Windows 7, so if you use Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10, you need to unplug the hard drive and re-plug it to a Windows 7 computer.

Step1. Connect your SSD to a Windows 7 installed computer. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right-click the SSD you want to erase, select «Secure Erase SSD» in the pop-up window.

Step 2. Here you should choose the SSD you want to erase securely. Click «Next».

Step 3. You’ll need to do a hot swap as your SSD is in frozen state. You can follow the hint by clicking “here” in the following operation page.

Step 4. After that, you can continue to secure erase SSD by clicking Next. And then, wait till the job is done.

Now, you can choose a proper feature to secure erase the HDD or SSD Windows 7. If you are wiping the Windows 7 system hard drive, you can create a bootable media first, boot computer from it and perform the above operations then.

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How to Wipe a Hard Drive

Wipe a computer hard drive clean with these steps

To wipe a hard drive means to completely erase the drive of all its information. Deleting everything does not wipe a hard drive and formatting does not usually wipe a hard drive. You’ll need to take an extra step to wipe the hard drive so the data cannot be easily reconstructed later.

When you format a hard drive or delete a partition, you’re usually only deleting the file system, making the data invisible, or no longer actively indexed, but not gone. A file recovery program or special hardware often recovers the information.

If you want to make sure that your private information is gone forever, you’ll need to wipe the hard drive using special software.

See the tip at the bottom of the page for information on a «simple» wipe using the format command in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista.

How to Wipe a Computer Hard Drive

This process could take several minutes to several hours depending on how big the drive is and what method you choose.

Back up anything you want to keep, such as photos, software product keys, etc. When the hard drive wipe is complete, there will be absolutely no way to get anything on the drive back.

If you’ve been using an online backup service, you can safely assume that all your important files are already backed up online. If you haven’t been so proactive, pick from several free offline backup tools that can save your files to an external hard drive.

Back up everything you want to keep; sometimes several virtual drives share space on a single physical hard drive. View the drives (volumes) that sit on a hard drive from the Disk Management tool in Windows.

Download a free data destruction program. Any of the first six programs we recommend on that list will work great because they can be used to wipe a hard drive from outside of Windows, a necessary feature if you want to wipe the hard drive that Windows is installed on.

We’re big fans of DBAN, our first pick on that list. It’s probably the most widely used hard drive wiping tool (but please know that it doesn’t wipe solid-state drives). See our How to Wipe a Hard Drive With DBAN tutorial if you’re nervous about hard drive wiping or prefer a more detailed walkthrough.

Wiping a hard drive is operating system independent if you use one of the bootable tools from our list.

There are actually several ways to completely erase a hard drive, but using data destruction software is the easiest and still allows the hard drive to be used again.

Complete whatever steps are necessary to install the software or, in the case of a bootable program like DBAN, get the ISO image on a CD or DVD disc, or a USB device like a flash drive:

If you’re using a CD or DVD, this process usually involves burning the ISO image to a disc and then booting from the disc to run the program.

If you’re using a flash drive or other USB drive, this process usually involves burning the ISO image to the USB device and then booting from that USB drive to get started.

Wipe the hard drive according to the program’s instructions.

Most data destruction programs offer several different methods to wipe a hard drive. If you’re curious about the effectiveness or methods used to complete the hard drive wipe, see Data Sanitization Methods.

Plug in your laptop or verify the battery’s fully charged. The total time it takes to finish the HDD wipe depends on the size of the drive and the speed of the computer.

After properly wiping a hard drive, you can be confident that whatever information was on the drive is now gone for good.

You can now install Windows on the drive, create a new partition, sell or give away the hard drive or computer, recycle or dispose of it, restore your backed up files, or whatever else you need to do.

A Simple Hard Drive Wipe Alternative

Beginning in Windows Vista, the format process changed and a single write-zero pass is applied to each standard (non-quick) format. In other words, a very basic hard drive wipe is performed during a format.

If a single write-zero pass is good enough for you, consider your drive wiped after a regular format in Windows 10, 8, 7, or Vista. If you want something even more secure, follow the hard drive wipe instructions above.

This is a wipe of just the partition you’re formatting. If you have more than one partition on a physical hard drive, you’ll need to format those additional drives as well if you want to consider the entire physical disk as «wiped.»

Is Shredding Files What You’re Really After?

If what you really want to do is just make sure that files you delete on a regular basis are really gone and not retrievable with special tools, a data wiping program is more than you need. See our list of free file shredder software programs for programs that «destroy» individual files on an as-needed basis.

Many of those shredder programs also do what’s called a free space wipe, which is a wipe of all the «empty» space on your hard drive. The purpose for this is to ensure that the files you’ve already deleted are actually deleted for good.

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How to erase a hard drive windows 7

Position: How Tos — How to completely wipe a hard drive on Windows 10/8/7?

Summary

Overview on wiping out a hard drive

It’s common to most users to sell or give away computer or hard drive when they want to dispose of old device or upgrade to new ones. You may have already formatted the hard drive or deleted files on it in order to erase sensitive personal data and avoid becoming the victim of identity theft.

However, the fact is that wiping out a hard drive is not as easy as deleting data or formatting hard disk. Simply deleting files by Shift + Delete or emptying the Recycle Bin does not permanently clear data, as deleted files can easily be recovered by recovery software. Formatting a hard drive does not completely erase data either. Though operating system cannot see deleted or formatted data and the drive looks empty, average users are able to get back lost data easily with the help of hard drive recovery software.

If you view tech forums or comminutes online, you can see lots of users looking for an easy way to clean storage devices, and here is one of them:

«What is the best way to clean the hard drive of my laptop? I’m going to selling it to someone but want to ensure all personal files are securely erased. What I want to do is cleaning hard drive completely and reinstalling Windows 7 (its configurations does not suitable for Windows 10). Everything on the hard disk has been backed up to my external hard drive, I’m hoping one of you here can tell me how to clearing PC step by step? I know how to install Windows from CD but have no idea how to safely wipe hard disk. Many thanks!»

Why deleting and formatting is not the same as erasing hard drive

Are you one of those who hold the view that deleting a file is similar to erase it? If yes, you should take a fresh look at this issue. We’ll explain reasons in an easier manner.

Hard drive is a kind of storage devices which is used to store digital data. Files are stored on the surface of magnetic and rotating platters in hard disk case. Hard disk changes the magnetic property of platter surface to 1 or 0 when reading or writing data. Thus all data on hard drive will be finally stored in the form of basic binary data, for example, when system saves data like photos, music, etc. on hard drive, rows of zeros and ones are recorded on platters.

When a file is deleted, those ones and zeros of that files stays unaffected, for only a pointer indicating the file is being deleted. Therefore, the recovering deleted files is available before file data gets overwritten or damaged. What about disk formatting? Formatting works in a similar way, as it does not actually wipe data. Formatting disk or partition looks like tearing the contents of a book without disturbing actual chapters of the book. Recovery software is also able to retrieve lost files from formatted disk.

How does hard disk wiping works?

You may wonder how disk wiping works since deletion and formatting does not work on permanently clean hard drive. Apart from physical damage to hard drive, we can completely remove data with disk wiping technology.

As we’ve mentioned above, to completely erase disk, we should remove those binary data, which means overwriting those zeros and ones with new data. Once binary data of a file is replaced and overwritten by new data, it cannot be recovered any more. Some professional disk eraser software is able to filling up disk with zeros or random information sector by sector, ensuring no data can be recovered from a wiped disk.

What to do before wiping a hard drive

Some preparatory work should be done before wiping computer hard drive in order to make sure the disk wiping can be completed without interruption or causing extra issues.

• Download and install hard drive wipe software. If you plan to clean hard disk on your own, a disk wipe tool is necessary. You should select one easy-to-use and effective tool for the task. If you want to wipe the entire computer, you should make sure the software can work on bootable drive.
• ВџВџEnsure battery is full. If you want to wipe a laptop, you should make sure the battery is well charged or connected to power. If power goes out during disk clearing, it might spell disaster to the drive.
• ВџBackup your data to a different hard disk. When you wipe your computer, everything on it will be lost, thus you should back up any files you want to keep to another hard drive. You can clone hard drive or just copy & paste files to that disk.
• Remember to save software serial numbers. Those applications you bought will be lost after wiping your PC, and you need to reinstall them to new hard drive. Do not forget to record each program’s serial number so that you can activate them after reinstallation.
• ВџВџDownload drivers. If you are going to reinstall operating system after hard drive is completely wiped, you may need to download necessary drivers for new system. You can go to official web site of the device and download the latest drivers.
• Prepare a bootable disk. If you are wiping computer’s main hard disk, you’ll have to carry out the task without booting system, such as under WinPE. In that case, a bootable USB drive or CD is needed.

Once everything gets ready, you can start erasing computer hard drive or external disks. The rest part of this instruction will show you how to erase storage device in different ways.

Method 1: Completely wipe computer by resetting your PC

This method wipes computer by using the reset feature in Windows 8.1 or 10 during reinstalling operating system, which has an option to remove everything on hard drive. This section takes Windows 10 as example to explain how to wipe computer completely. If your computer is running an older version of Windows, you can try steps in Method 2 to erase hard disk.

Step 1 Click «Start» menu and select «Settings» option. On Windows Settings pane click «Update & Security» option.

Step 2 Click «Recovery» option on the left navigation options and then click Get «Started» button under «Reset this PC» section.

Step 3 Select «Remove everything» option which removes all of your personal files, apps, and settings and start over.

Step 4 Select «Remove files and clean the drive» when you are asked to whether to clean the drives too. The cleaning process may take longer time but it makes sure no one can recover erased files.

Step 5 Click «Next» and «Reset» button on following steps to complete the task.

Method 2: Wipe hard drive using free hard drive eraser software

The secure way to erase data for good is overwriting data and refill hard disk using zeros or random data, so that nobody can recover wiped data with disk recovery software. Sounds complex? Actually, nowadays cleaning hard disk is not a complicated work, and you can easily and securely erase disk using disk wipe software.

Free hard drive wipe software

DiskGenius is free software for permanently data wiping. With this hard disk eraser, you can wipe all data on by filling disk sector by sector, making files unrecoverable. Besides, it is a free partition manager program which is able to resize, format, clone or backup partition, check &repair bad sectors, backup data, etc. Here are features of disk wiping function:

• ВџВџВџCompletely erase data on an entire hard drive or partition ВџPermanently delete certain existing files so that they cannot be recovered.
• ВџSafely wipe deleted data without affecting existing files.
• Supports creating bootable USB drive so that you can use the software when computer fails to boot. ВџSupports all popular file systems such as NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, FAT12, exFAT, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, etc.
• It works with various storage media for example hard drive, external HDD, SSD, USB flash drive, SD card, virtual disk, etc.
• Portable version is available, both 32 bit and 64 bit.

The following content introduces how to erase data in difference situations, and you can choose which to use in line with actual demands, for instance, you want to clear an SD card or other removable devices, Case 1 is the proper solution; if you want to wipe computer, then go to Case 2.

Case 1: Safely erase external hard drive / SD card / USB flash drive

Step 1 Connect the removable device to your computer and make sure it can be recognized by Windows.

Step 2 Install and run DiskGenius from your PC and you can see all local disks and portable devices on the main interface.

Step 3 Select the external hard drive or SD card you want to erase data, and select «Erase Sectors» option under Tools menu.

Step 4 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.e. Random Data, 00, FF and User Specify. You can either choose one from «00, FF and Random Data», or specify item to fill disk.

Step 5 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.

Case 2: How to wipe computer’s main hard drive

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. In this situation, we can erase the hard disk in Pre-OS environment, for example Windows PE.

DiskGenius is able to reboot to its WinPE version directly from Windows as well as creating bootable USB disk with which you can boot computer and run the WinPE version. If you want to create a bootable WinPE USB stick, you can insert your USB flash drive and click Tools menu and select «Create WinPE bootable USB drive of DiskGenius». The following steps show how to reboot computer to WinPE version directly and then erase system disk.

Step 1 Launch the free disk wipe tool DiskGenius from your Windows computer.

Step 2 Click menu «File» and choose «Reboot to DiskGenius WinPE version» option.

Step 3 It takes about two minutes to create booting information for Windows PE, please wait it to complete with patience.

Step 4 Once the application is ready to reboot, it prompts to restart and backup data. Click «OK» button and computer reboots.

Then the DiskGenius WinPE version is launched, which contains same features with the Windows version.

Step 5 Select computer’s primary hard drive where Windows is installed and click «Erase Sectors» option which can be found under Tools menu.

Step 6 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:

Step 1 Launch DiskGenius again, and locate files you want to permanently delete. Select those files and right-click them to choose «Delete Files Permanently».

Step 2 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. Besides, you should select «Delete Directory Entry» option on FAT partition (and the option will be «Delete File Record in $MFT» on NTFS partition).

Step 3 Click «Delete» button to confirm the action to be done.

When selected files get deleted, you can continue to delete other data on your computer.

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. For instance, you’ve formatted hard drive and reinstalled operating system, what you need to do is erasing all disk area except system; or you’ve deleted sensitive using Shift + Delete, and want to make sure they are no longer recoverable without affecting existing data.

Step 1 Start Eassos DiskGenius, click «Tools» menu and select «Erase Free Space» item.

This function permanently erases unused free disk space, preventing data from being recovered.

Step 2 Select partition / disk for which you want to erase free space and click «OK» button.

Step 3 Select characters to overwrite disk space and click «Erase» button.

Step 4 The application starts cleaning unused disk space, which takes long time if free space is very larger.

Method 3: Clean PC hard drive by physically destroying it

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.

Step 1 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.

Step 2 Remove platters and heads out of hard drive enclosure, and use a hammer to hit platters. Then repeatedly strike other components.

Step 3 Box up all components and throw them to garbage can.

Summary

This article talks about three methods to wipe a computer, hard drive or removable disk, helping to make sure sensitive data can be erased safely and completely. Files erased by these methods is no longer available for data recovery, thus please make sure important files have been backed up 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, please feel free to contact us.

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