How to Clean Windows Computer Hard Drive Before Selling

Need to clean computer hard drive

Clean computer hard drive is meaningful for computer users especially when you are planning sell it. Windows users all know that the deleted data could be recovered with some data recovery tools. Once your old data recovered after you sold it, it may cause a big problem for you. Thus, you need to clean computer hard drive to protect your data from a malicious recovering. Meanwhile, if the hard drive’s performance is dropping down, clean computer hard drive may help you reset it to factory settings, which can increase its read and write speed.

Well, how to clean computer hard drive before selling?

Windows Diskpart clean computer hard drive

Windows Diskpart allows you to clean up computer hard drive with command line. To clean computer hard drive, you can refer to the following steps.

First, you need to open the command prompt. ClickStart, type “cmd” in the search box. Right click the program and select “Run as Administrator”. In Windows 10, Press “Win + R”, type “cmd” to get into the command prompt.

1. In the prompt, input “diskpart”, pressEnterto launch the program.

2. In Diskpart prompt, typelist disk, and pressEnter. It will list all disk(s) on your computer.

3. Type select disk n (n refers the disk number that needed to clean or clean all).

* If the disk you selected is offline, you should typeonline disk, pressEnter to make it online.

4. Then, typeclean or clean all. It will clean data on the hard drive. The clean all command will erase every byte on the disk to prevent the deleted data being able to recover, which will take longer time than clean command.

Using Windows Diskpart to clean computer hard drive needs more careful because the operation is irrevocable. once there are some errors, it may cause a big damage. Thus, here we highly recommend you another hard drive eraser.

Hard drive eraser

As the different constructions of HDD and SSD, the operating principles of those two types of storage devices are different. HDD is a platter covered with a metal coat. It has a metal arm, when it works, the platter spinning at a very high speed. While SSD stored data with a little chip. It has the limited read and write times. Thus, if you wipe SSD with the same method of wiping HDD, you may hurt the SSD and decrease its lifespan. Thus, you’d better use the professional tool to erase SSD securely without hurting it.

AOMEI Partition Assistant should be the best hard drive eraser that can help you clean computer hard drive while keeping the hard drive’s performance in the best status. It has two different ways of wiping hard drive: Wipe Hard Drive is designed for wiping hard disk drive (HDD), USB flash drives, etc. While Secure Erase SSD is specially designed for wiping solid state drive (SSD).

How to clean computer hard drive before selling?

To clean up your hard drive before selling, you can make use of AOMEI Partition Assistant. With this great hard disk cleaner, clean up your hard drive including system only need a few simple steps. And here you can learn how to wipe hard disk drive and how to secure erase SSD in the next content.

Wipe hard disk drive

Note: The data will be removed completely via this method and it’s impossible to recover them after that. So please be careful and back up important data to cloud or external at first.

Step1. Free download AOMEI Partition Assistant. Install and launch it. If there is any important data on the hard drive, backup hard drive first.

Step2. In the main interface, right-click the hard drive that needs to be wiped, select Wipe Hard Drive in the pop up menu.

Step3. It will pop up a window for you to choose wiping method. Here we choose Fill sectors with Zero, which is safe and quick. This operation will delete all partitions and erase all data on the selected hard drive. Please make sure you have backed up the important data before, click OK to continue.

* If you need to clean computer hard drive deeply, you can upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional for the advanced wiping methods.

Step4. It will pop up a note to ask you if you are sure to delete all partitions including system partition. If the system partition is deleted, your computer won't start the next time. If there is no problem, click Yes to move on.

Step 5. Click Apply

Secure erase SSD

Different with wiping HDD, you can’t use the same way to wipe SSD. If you use the way wiping hard drive to wipe SSD, you may destroy the SSD. Well, the Secure Erase SSD of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Edition will help you reset your SSD to the factory settings and restore it to its peak performance.

Note: AOMEI Partition Assistant Secure Erase SSD only supported by Windows 7 operating system at present. If you are using other OSes, you can plug out the SSD and plug in a Windows 7 computer to erase SSD securely.

Step1. Connect your SSD to your Windows 7 computer. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right click the SSD you would like to erase, select Secure Erase SSD in the pop out menu (or you can open Secure Erase SSD Wizard from All Tools).

Step2. Read the Secure Erase notice, Click Next.

Step3. Then, you can choose the SSD you want to securely erase in the Disk list. Here is Samsung SSD 830. Click Next.

Step4. You may meet the problem that the SSD is in a frozen state. To continue with secure erase, here you need to perform hot swap for this SSD to relieve the frozen state.

How to perform hot swap? Here you can follow the prompt below:

1. Open your computer case. If it is a laptop, open the computer's rear cover or drive shell.

2. Located the SSD that needs to be securely erased.

3. Unplug the power cable from the SSD.

4. Disconnect the SATA data cable from the SSD.

5. Reconnect the SATA cable to the SATA port on the SSD.

6. Finally, plug the power cable back into the SSD’s power connector.

Step5. After relieving the frozen state, continue to secure erase SSD. Click Next, and wait till the progress finished.

Tips: If the operation still works in progress after 2 minutes, please cancel the operation, and then, try again from the start.

Conclusion

AOMEI Partition Assistant is such a great hard drive eraser that can help your HDD/SSD keeps the best performance. Actually, it is more than a hard drive eraser. If you find your computer works slower and slower, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant to repartition your hard drive, or extend C: drive to improve computer’s performance. Besides, it has many advanced features in AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional edition, such as allocate free space, partition alignment, command line partitioning, recover lost data, etc. It is worth to try.