Learn what to do before selling PS4 to prevent your privacy from leaking in any situation during the selling.
Since PS5 and Xbox Series are released for a period, many players start to consider selling their PS4 to purchase PS5 for a better playing experience. Or some people may just want to give away their old PS4. No matter what kind of motive makes you want to do the trade, there is a necessary operation you need to do—erase all personal data.
Before you hand over your PS4, the most important thing you need to finish is to make sure all your personal data is cleaned, and we’re not just talking about deleting something, but thoroughly wipe all on your PS4 hard drive to protect your privacy from any possibility of leaking away.
As we said before, what you should prepare for your PS4 before selling is to make sure you totally clean the hard drive, delete it easily, but it can’t ensure all information will be cleared. Therefore, here’s a guide to help you thoroughly wipe all data on the PS4 hard drive.
Many players will give priority to initializing the hard drive to delete all data. Here, we list clear steps of initialization. These two sections in this method, please read carefully.
Section 1. Deactivate
If you don’t use your PS4 again, you should deactivate it to disassociate your PS4 from your account. If you ignore this operation, other players can play games on your primary PS4.
Step 1. Open “Settings” in your PS4.
Step 2. Open “Account Management” to deactivate your PS4.
Step 3. Select the “Activate as Your Primary PS4” option.
Step 4. Choose “Deactivate”.
Step 5. On the screen, you can see all notes about the actions. Click “Yes” to confirm.
Section 2. Initialize
Initialization will make sure all your account data, relevant social accounts, game datum… will be wiped. Your PS4 will totally be new after you finish the initialization.
Step 1. Sign in to your account. Open “Settings” again.
Step2. Find “Initialization” at the end of the menu.
Step 3. Select “Initialize PS4”. There are 3 options on the screen, choose “Initialize PS4” to thoroughly wipe all data on your PS4’s hard drive. This’ll delete games, saved data, and anything else you’ve downloaded or saved to your PS4.
Notes: "Restore Default Settings” will only delete the saved settings and return your PS4 to factory settings. It won’t erase all the data on your hard drive.
Step 4. On the new prompt page, you’ll see two selections: “Quick” or “Full”. Choose “Full” to wipe everything. This will take several hours.
Warning: Do not turn off your PS4 system during the process of initialization, this might damage your system.
Do you have another choice to quickly and safely wipe everything on your PS4 hard drive? Of course, if you think the first method is a little complex or you can’t initialize your PS4 for some personal reasons, third-party software will be your reliable partner. AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is such a powerful tool whose “Wipe Hard Drive” function can offer you 4 options to wipe data on the hard drive with simple steps to protect your privacy from leaking or retrieving.
Before we start, you need to plug your PS4 hard drive into your PC. After that, let’s wipe your personal information with this convenient application.
Step 1. Install and run Partition Assistant. Right-click your PS4 disk and select “Wipe Hard Drive” in the small menu.
Step 2. In the popup window, you can choose a suitable way to wipe your hard drive, and click “OK”. Here, we choose “Full sector with random data (Safe, Quick)” as an example, it can write random data to every sector on a hard drive to avoid retrieving data for recovery software.
• DoD 5220.22-M: this way will prevent all software-based file recovery methods, as well as hardware-based recovery methods, from recovering meaningful data from the drive. • Gutmann: this way will prevent all software-based file recovery software. It is much safer than other methods, but it takes more time.
Step 3. Then you click “Apply” on the top left corner of the main page to execute the wipe.
After these 3 steps, all data on your PS4 hard drive will be wiped thoroughly and won’t be recover. You can insert the PS4 hard drive back into the PS4.
Now you know what to do before selling PS4. Wiping your data is a considerate choice for players because it can effectively prevent privacy from embezzlement. And AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro offers you easier steps to wipe information before selling PS4.