How to Wipe Seagate External Hard Drive Securely in Windows 10, 8, 7?

• Real user case

• When need to erase a Seagate external hard drive?

• Software to wipe clean Seagate external hard drive in Windows PC

• Steps to secure erase Seagate external HDD&SSD

• Conclusion

Real user case

“Hi, my old 1TB Seagate external hard drive has been working for many years and its performance can not meet my requirements any longer, so I am planning to resell it and buy a new 2TB external hard drive. But I have stored a large number of data on the hard drive, so I want firstly to clean all the existing and history data on this Seagate external hard drive. Can I just format it? Or how can I totally wipe Seagate external hard drive? Thanks in advance."

Why need to erase a Seagate external hard drive?

When the time comes to erasing everything on a Seagate external hard drive, many user will first think of formatting the hard drive via a disk formatting utility. However, does the formatting erase everything permanently? Sorry to say no, that's because the formatting process just makes the data invisible to the operating system, but they are still there and can be recovered easily. 

To completely erase all data from the Seagate hard drive and make them impossible to be recovered, you need to use a professional hard drive wiper, which can completely wipe hard drive out to protect your information well.

Software to wipe clean Seagate external hard drive in Windows

In order to permanently and safely wipe out the data from your Seagate external hard drive, you can apply AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. For wiping clean Seagate HDD, it provides “Wipe Hard Drive” feature, with four different wiping methods available for selection:

1. Fill sectors with zero: wipe the hard drive contents by overwriting them with zeros. Each bit present in the disk is replaced by a zero value, hence the name zero filling.
2. Fill sectors with random data: fill the disk with random data instead, making it harder for recovery software to find any meaningful data. It is considered more secure.
3. DoD 5220.22-M: a software-based data sanitization method used in file shredder and data destruction programs to overwrite existing information on hard drive for 3 passes. It can prevent all software based file recovery methods and most hardware-based recovery methods from lifting information from the drive.
4. Gutmann: wipe the hard disk and overwrite the existing information for 35 passes to ensure the data are securely sanitized.

To wipe clean Seagate solid-state drive, it offers the “SSD Secure Erase” function. It can securely and permanently clean up the data on your SSD drive and decrease the data recovery chance. Now let’s figure out how it works.

Steps to secure erase Seagate external HDD/SSD

If there are some files or data you want to keep, make a backup via AOMEI Backupper in advance since all the data will be cleaned on the external drive after wiping the external hard drive.

PS.: You can download the Pro demo and have a try first.

Part 1. Wipe clean Seagate external HDD permanently

1. Install and launch the software. Locate the Seagate HDD and right-click on it to select “Wipe Hard Drive” from the drop-down menu. 

2. In the pop-up mini window, choose a proper method to wipe Seagate external HDD according to your specific requirements.

3. Click "Apply” to confirm the operation and click “Proceed” to execute the pending operations.

☞Apart from wiping entire (Seagate) external hard drive, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional also enables you to wipe only one partition on the hard disk. For example, you can wipe C partition for a fresh installation within Windows.

Part 2. Wipe clean Seagate SSD

Different from HDD in reading as well as writing ways, so the Seagate SSD should be wiped out in a different method. The “SSD Secure Erase Wizard” offered by AOMEI Partition Assistant could ensure all data stored on the SSD storage device will be completely cleaned without damaging SSD performance and lifespan.

But this feature could only work in Windows7, so firstly please connect the Seagate SSD to a computer running Windows7 and make sure it is recognized. Then follow the steps:

1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional on your computer, click the Seagate SSD drive and select "Wipe"> “SSD Secure Erase”.

2. Choose the target SSD drive and click “Next”.

3. At the “SSD identification information” page, you may find the SSD is in a frozen state. Perform a hot-swap so that you can continue to wipe out the Seagate hard drive.

Note: as for how to perform a hot-swap, refer to the tutorial provided in the window by clicking “here”.

4. Click “Next” to start wiping all data on SSD drive completely.

Conclusion

After you wipe Seagate external hard drive (HDD or SSD), the whole disk space will become an unallocated space in Disk Management. If you want to use it again, you can use the Quick Partition (offered by AOMEI PA Pro) to create several new partitions in one click. Besides, wiping or erasing the Seagate external hard drive is also a good way to reset Seagate external hard drive to factory setting, or tackle with SSD slow issue.

No matter which brand of the hard drive you want to wipe, the AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard will never let you down. If your computer runs Windows Server 2003, 2008 (R2), 2012 (R2), 2016 and SBS 2003, 2008, 2011, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.