How to Use HP Disk Sanitizer to Wipe a Hard Drive?

What is HP Disk Sanitizer?

Before selling a hard drive, it is necessary to find a way to erase all data on the hard drive. You can’t just delete or format it, because simple deletion is actually not erased from the hard drive and exist high risk that deleted data are stolen by recovery software.

HP PC provides the HP Disk Sanitizer tool to destroy all data on a hard drive. It uses DoD (Department of Defense) wiping methods that overwrite a hard drive with different and random patterns of data to protect your sensitive data from leakage.

● HP Secure Erase VS Disk Sanitizer

HP Secure Erase is another wiping option in HP BIOS. HP Secure Erase and HP Disk Sanitizer both can permanently wipe data on a storage device. What is the difference between them?

HP Disk Sanitizer: It only works on hard drives (HDDs). It can’t erase data on solid-state drives.

HP Secure Erase: It allows you to wipe a hard drive and solid-state drives. And HP only adds it in the standard BIOS in 2011 and later versions. The previous versions can upgrade to have HP Secure Erase.

Next, we will show you how to use this tool to wipe a hard drive in HP BIOS.

How to use HP Disk Sanitizer to a hard drive?

✍Note: ● This utility will wipe all data on the hard drive including the OS. Please back up important data or the system if you need it. ● HP PCs that sold before 2009 may don’t have Disk Sanitizer tool, you can download it from HP.com and burn it to a bootable USB to create disk sanitizer external edition. Or you can turn to an alternative DoD wiping tool.

Step 1. Power on/restart your HP computer/laptop.

Step 2. When you see the HP logo on the screen, immediately tap “F10” key to enter the BIOS setup.

Step 3.  In the BIOS window, choose the “Security” tab.

Step 4. And find the "Disk Sanitizer" option in the Security tab. Click it to launch the tool.

Step 5. Then, select the hard drive you want to wipe.

Wait for a while, the hard drive you chose will be wiped out.

Alternative HP disk wiping software when HP Disk Sanitizer cannot load

Since the Disk Sanitizer does not support old HP PCs, you can turn to an alternative HP disk wiping software-AOMEI Partition Assistant. This wiping software provides 4 data writing ways to permanently erase a hard drive including the DoD wiping standard for HP computers and laptops.

Besides, it supports “Wipe Partition”, which only erases the data on one selected partition, allowing you to wipe a hard drive without deleting Windows OS. Here is the Demo version, you can download it firstly and see the details of the tool.

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".

Conclusion

HP Disk Sanitizer is an effective way to completely wipe a hard drive in HP PC. And you can also use AOMEI Partition Assistant in a circumstance where the HP wiping method is unavailable. And this tool can also create a bootable disk to wipe hard drive via the “Make Bootable Media” function.

If you need to perform the operation in Windows Server, you can employ the Server Edition that supports Windows Server 2025, 2022, 2019, 2016, 2012 (R2)