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 Professional. 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 open AOMEI Partition Assistant. Click “Wipe” on in the top toolbar, and choose “Wipe Hard Drive”.

Step 2. Choose “DoD 5220.22-M” in the window, and select a writing time. 

✍Note: You can also choose the rest of the 3 options that offers different security according to your need.
● Fill sectors with Zero: It overwrites hard drive with zeros. It is a safe way to erase a hard drive.
● Fill sectors with random data: It fills all sectors with data and safer than the first option.
● Guttmann: It overwrites a hard drive with 35 passes. Guttman offers the highest security and takes a long time.

Step 3. And you will have a preview of the operation. Click “Apply” on the top of the interface to commit it.

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 2003, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019.