How to Wipe a Hard Drive for Reuse in Windows 10, 8, 7?

Scenario

How to wipe a hard drive for reuse?

I have an old internal hard drive that had some viruses and malware. I want to convert it to an external hard drive to store large amounts of data. I want to completely wipe the hard drive for reuse. what is the best way to wipe a hard drive? Thanks."

- Question from Cnet.com/forum/

People store massive data on hard drives or other storage devices. but sometimes, a hard drive is so vulnerable that it can be easily affected by virus and malware. After failing to repair the hard drive, wiping a hard drive for reuse is the last and good solution you can do. And even you want to sell or abandon it, it is necessary to delete all data on it to avoid data leakage.

Some people would format their hard drives to erase all data, which is actually unable to delete all data. The formatting process just deletes the partition table and makes data and files invisible to the system. so they can be easily recovered.

So what is the best way to wipe a hard drive completely and permanently in Windows 10, 8, 7?

Reliable and powerful hard drive wiping software

To completely clean out a hard drive, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional can be the first choice for most people. It is a piece of reliable and powerful wiping software, which helps you to securely delete all data on a hard drive, USB drive, SD card, or a partition of it.

And it is a user-friendly tool. The whole process can be finished in a few steps. Besides, if your PC can’t boot from the hard drive, AOMEI Partition Assistant enables you to create a Windows PE USB or CD to boot up your computer firstly, and you can wipe the hard drive successfully.

Here is the Demo version allowing you to have a try to see how to use this software, just download it and refer to the following steps.

How to wipe a hard drive for reuse in Windows 10, 8, 7?

Connect the hard drive to your PC, and refer to the following steps to completely wipe the data on it.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant,  click the "Wipe" main tab and select "Wipe Hard Disk" option. (You can also right-click the Disk you want to wipe and select the "Wipe Hard Drive" option.)

Step 2. Select the disk you want to wipe and click "OK" to continue.

In this stage, you can also select a wiping method to wipe the selected hard drive according to your requirements and click "OK". (By default, the wiping method is Fill in 0.)

Notes:

• Fill in 0: Overwrite all sectors with zeros. It is common to wipe a personal hard drive. It is safe and fast.
• Fill in random information: It overwrites the hard drive with random data. It is more secure than the first one.
• DoD 5220.22-M: It will overwrite addressable locations on the hard disk with binary 0's, binary 1's, and a random bit pattern from once to seven times. The more times you choose to overwrite, the longer the process will take. Three times to five times are recommended. It is more secure than "zero-filling" and "random data filling" and faster than the Guttman. Thus it is often adopted by companies and organizations.
• Gutmann: It overwrites a hard drive with 35 passes. It is the safest way here, but it also takes the longest time.

Step 3. You can preview the shrink operation by viewing the "Pending Operations". To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed".

And after a while, the hard drive will be completely wiped out, you can connect it to other machines to reuse it.

Addition: How to completely wipe an SSD?

It is worth mentioning that this wiping method is not applied to wiping an SSD. because SSDs store data using flash memory chips, which is entirely different from HDD. If you employ the same way to erase the data on an SSD, its lifespan can be decreased.

Fortunately, AOMEI Partition Assistant also provides a wiping way that designed for SSD-“SSD Secure Erase”. It is able to delete all data on an SSD without hurting it. But at present, it can only work in the Windows 7 environment.

Just connect your SSD to a Windows 7 computer. And launch the SSD secure erasing tool, and right-click on the SSD, choose “SSD Secure Erase” to start the program.

Conclusion

This is how to wipe a hard drive for reuse in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 to protect private data and files. And actually, AOMEI Partition Assistant is a professional disk and partition manager, and it also provides lots of other features to help you to make use of your drive. For example, after wiping the hard drive, you can also use it to create partition on it.

And there is AOMEI Partition Assistant Server for wiping disk on Server systems. If you want to use it on multiple PCs, you can turn to Unlimited Edition.