If you use a Hard drive, you might know that deleted data can be recovered using a third-party app. This is possible even when users delete items from the Recycle Bin.
Why does this happen?
This happens because the deleted files are Marked as deleted on a traditional magnet drive, making data recovery easy.
However, this doesn’t happen with modern solid-state drives, which use TRIM by default. This ensures that deleted files are deleted immediately.
External storage devices, such as USB flash drives, also don’t support TRIM, which means deleted files can be recovered. To prevent file recovery, you must wipe a drive; a simple format will not work.
Also Read: How to Hide Files, Folders & Drives in Windows 11
How to Wipe a Drive on Windows
It’s pretty easy to Wipe a drive on Windows 10 and Windows 11. Here’s what you need to do.
1. Using the Format option
To wipe an entire drive, you must perform a full format instead of a Quick format. Here’s what you need to do.
1. Open File Explorer and right-click on the Drive you want to wipe.
2. From the list of options, select Format
3. On the format options, uncheck the ‘Quick Format’ option and click the Start button.
This will take a bit of time to complete. Once completed, the Drive will be wiped.
2. How to Wipe only Free Space
If you don’t want to remove the content, you can wipe only free space. This will wipe only the free space, overwriting it with zeros. Here’s what you need to do.
1. First of all, open Windows search and type in Powershell.
2. Right-click on Powershell and select the Run as administrator option.
3. On Powershell, you need to run the following command. Replace the X with the drive letter you want to wipe.
cipher /w:X:\
For example: cipher /w:G:\
3. Wipe Your System Drive
You can use the built-in Reset this PC option to Wipe your Windows system drive. Here’s how.
1. Open Windows settings and click the ‘Update & Security’ option.
2. On the left pane, click on the Recovery option as shown below.
3. On the right, click the Get Started button behind Reset this PC.
4. On the Reset this PC dialog box, select ‘Remove Everything’
5. Next, follow the on-screen instructions to complete the reset process.
This will remove everything stored on your System Drive. So, ensure a proper backup file is ready before performing the System reset.
4. Wipe a drive on Windows via Command Prompt
You can even use the Command Prompt utility to clean a hard drive on the Windows operating system. Here’s how you can wipe a drive on Windows 11 using the Command Prompt utility.
1. Type the command prompt on the Windows 11 Search. Right-click on the CMD and select Run as administrator.
2. When the Command Prompt opens, execute the command: diskpart
3. Now execute the command: list disk
4. This will list all drives you have. Note down the Disk number.
5. Now select the disk drive you want to wipe. For the selection, execute this command: select disk X
Note: Replace X with the disk number you want to wipe. For example, select disk 2.
6. Once done, type clean and press Enter.
7. This will format your disk. Now you need to format the disk in NTFS file format & assign it a drive letter to make it usable. For that, execute these commands one by one:
create partition primary select partition 2 active format FS=NTFS quick assign letter=X exit
Important: In the 5th command, replace the X with the drive letter you want to assign to your drive.
The above methods will wipe a drive on Windows 100/11. Wiping a drive is very different from formatting it. I hope this article helped you.! Please share it with your friends. If you have any doubts, let us know in the comment box below.