Securely Erase Your Hard Drive: The Fast & Easy Way Using Windows CMD

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We all need to securely erase a drive here and there. On Windows, there's a very simple way to do this. This method will re-write the entire drive with zeros, so that the underlying data is overwritten, and this makes it extremely difficult (usually impossible) to obtain any of the data.

Here are the commands:

1. Open command prompt as administrator
2. Type: diskpart
3. Type: list disk
4. Find the disk you wish to erase on the list
5. Type: select disk and then the disk number
6. Type: clean all
7. Wait several hours until it is finished

TOS:

Intro: 00:00
Whokeys #ad: 01:00
Tutorial Instructions Begin: 2:21
How To Tell Which Drive to Clean: 2:50
Select and Clean Your Drive: 3:55
What to do Once it is Finished: 4:54
Check out @easymode 6:50

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[Hansch]

Nice tutorial. At work I securely erase the obsolete disks with an hydraulic press. 👍

[teksyndicate]

This is the easy, fast method. For all your nerds out there, the next video will be DBAN... yes I know it's better, but it's overkill for most people. Yes, "clean all" does work on SSDs, but you do not want to do it multiple times. DBAN works for SSD as well as regular HDDs... but it can drastically shorten the life of an SSD... so only use it if you're throwing it away. There are other methods for SSD that I will cover.

[foxythedestroyer]

This helped me get an external hard drive to start showing up again, thank you for all the help!

[tedjohnson]

Very clever! I’ve used DBAN, but it took forever, so lately I’ve just been using a 4 lb sledgehammer.

[tux]

I usually use dd on Linux/BSD and had no idea Windows diskpart could wipe a drive. I learned something new. Thanks Logan! Have you considered doing a video on sdelete? It works great for secure erasing only the free space on a disk volume.

[jbaamm]

I’m at the “Clean All” with a blinking cursor underneath. When will I know the process is finished? Thanks!

[Trylen]

I always love it when my Bosses notice the blue thumbdrive on my key chain. As can't do much with a 128MB drive anymore, I call it "I've had a bad day Drive." Then I have to explain what DBan's Nukedisk is.
My last day at Radioshack, the store was closing. My manager told me what we were using to blank the systems, I laughed and got out my key chain. Turns out it was 4 versions newer then the one head office supplied. I think it was the only time he called me scary. But that's to that it took half the time.
Recently, as I now work at a print factory, I do IT when I have the chance and was teasing my Lead with it.

[ridwanahamed]

I accidentally pick the wrong disk part while doing this process. I stopped it immediately within a few seconds. Now what I can I do to reverse it?

[iTK]

For your next video, you should also test both method against recover tools. Theoritcally, 1-round of wipe isn't enough.

[Paul_]

Thanks for sharing this method, is there any value in repeating the process a couple of times?

[wmp]

I've never sold or thrown out any of my hard drives dating back to 2003. I just put them in a box and I can barely lift the box now.

[raynjpg]

hey thanks. i've reformatted my disks a couple times, but never did the cmd prompt method, just right click > format. i'll get around to fully cleaning my disks sometime. i'll also be waiting for your methods specific to SSD's because i don't want to shorten their lifespan.

[dinonuggiesopdino]

Help I did this and now I can’t turn my pc on it keeps saying it can’t boot up

[CarbonGlassMan]

Got daumnit! Its morning & I;m trying to get this disk to accept a clone so I did the clean all command before watching your video, I had no idea this was going to take hours,

[dampe]

Thanks! Great 'Help!' Video!💯

[XaphillyatedX]

Does this work for wiping slack space too?

[randr]

What do you think of a piece of software called "eraser"?
I've used this to wipe traditional drives before and you can set it up to do multiple passes so that even an electron microscope couldn't even be used to read the original data. I don't have enough knowledge about how SSD's work to tell whether this would make the drive equally secure. I've heard that they're not as easy to erase with no chance of data recovery like an old school hard drive.

[hcuofpn]

Just take the drive apart and remove the pcb the spinning disks of rust and the you can recycle the pcb, metal work.

[manelaero]

Hi the command clean all will delete all data from the disk, but if we would like to clean only unused part of the disk, wich command shall we use ? thank you very much

[enthusiasticpaunch]

Show us the emails! Lock her up! Oof, sorry. What I meant to say was, very informative.