To destroy a hard drive is to erase a drive of all the information on it. Deleting everything and formatting does not erase a hard drive. You will have to take an additional step to completely destroy a hard drive..
When you format a hard drive or delete a partition, you often only delete the file system, making the data blatantly invisible or unable to be indexed but it is not completely gone. A file recovery program or special hardware can easily restore the information.
If you want to ensure that your private information is really gone for good, you will need to destroy the hard drive using special software..
Important: See Note # 2 near the end of the page for more information on simple shredding using the format command in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista.
Follow the easy steps below to completely destroy a hard drive..
Time Required : This can vary from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the capacity of the hard drive and the method you have chosen to destroy it.
1. Back up anything you want to keep. When hard drive destruction is done, there will be absolutely no solution to recover anything from the drive.
Note: If you have used an online recovery service before, you can be sure that all your important files are already backed up online.
Important: Occasionally multiple drives exist on a single hard drive. You can view the drives on a hard drive through the "Disk Management" tool in Windows.
2. Download a free data destruction program. All of the first eight recommended programs in the list will work great because they can be used to destroy a hard drive from outside of Windows, a necessary feature in case you want to wipe the hard drive that Windows is installed on.
Note : I'm a fan of DBAN, which is our top pick on this list. It is probably the most widely used hard drive destruction tool.
Note: There are several ways to completely erase a hard drive, but using data destruction software is the easiest and still allows the hard drive to be reused.
3. Complete all the necessary steps for installing the software. Or, in the case of a bootable program such as DBAN, load the ISO image onto a CD or DVD disc, or a USB device like a flash drive:
- If you are using a CD or DVD, this involves copying the ISO image to a disc and then booting from the disc to launch the program.
- If you are using a flash drive or other USB drives, this often involves copying the ISO image to a USB device and then booting from that USB device to begin with.
4. Destroy the hard drive according to the program instructions.
Note : Most data destruction programs take advantage of several different methods to destroy a hard drive. If you are curious about the effectiveness or methods employed to complete hard drive destruction, see Methods of Data Disinfection.
5. After properly destroying a hard drive, you can be sure that any information on the drive is gone forever.
Now you can install Windows on the drive, create a new partition, sell or donate the drive or computer, recycle or dispose of it, restore your backed up files, whatever you have to do.
Note and more information on destroying hard drives
1. Destroy Hard Drive is an independent operating system, as long as you use one of the startup tools from our list. This means that you can destroy a hard drive using the same general process if you have Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux, or other operating systems on a personal computer. .
2. New to Windows Vista, the formatting process has changed and only one overwrite operation with zeros is applied in each criteria of formatting (non-fast). The basic destruction of a hard drive is performed during formatting.
If a single overwrite operation with zeros would be good enough for you, consider the drive destroyed after regular formatting in Windows 10, and return via Windows Vista. If you want something more secure, go ahead and follow the hard drive destruction instructions above.
Also keep in mind that it is the destruction of the partition that you are formatting. If you have more than one partition on a physical hard drive, you will also need to format those additional drives if you want to treat the entire physical drive as “ destroyed ”.
3. If what you really want to do is make sure the files are completely erased, a data shredder is all you need. See our article on how to destroy individual files with file shredder software.
Many " shredder " programs also do what is called " free space destruction ". It is the destruction of all free space on your hard drive, which could, of course, include all your previously deleted files.
Still confused? See the article Destroy vs Grind vs Delete vs Erase: What's the difference? for more information.
