

Backing Up Your Data Before Wiping a Hard Drive In this article, we’ll go over how to wipe drives according to the Department of Defense (DoD) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards.īefore you wipe your old hard drive though, you may want to back up your data first. This included the recovery of passwords using basic recovery methods. Similar statistics have arisen from reputable enterprises as well.Īfter procuring a couple of hundred devices sold on sites like eBay, with 40% of the devices and drives they could recover vulnerable personal information. While the process of wiping a drive can seem simple, a 2017 study from the National Association for Information Destruction found that improper data erasure is very common. It will take a short while to delete all the files and change the format of the disk.When you upgrade to a new hard drive, SSD, or to a new computer entirely, it is critical that you properly wipe your old hard drive before selling it or disposing of it.

Complete the following steps in Disk Management: Use the start menu to search for and open the disk management utility – “Create and format hard disk partitions”. It will take a short while to delete all the files and change the format of the disk. Select the format type you wish to use and give the drive a name.Select the drive you wish to format from the list.Next, complete the following steps in Disk Utility To find it quickly, do a search for “Disk Utility” in the spotlight (magnify glass) icon on the upper right side of the screen. To reformat a hard drive or USB stick first open Disk Utility.

Mac OS Extended (Journaled) – Standard MAC only formatįormat Drive Instructions MAC Instructions.ExFAT – Compatible with Windows and Mac Operating Systems.This process only takes a few minutes but will erase all files on the drive so make sure you copy off any files you need before reformatting. To copy files to the drive you must re-format it using a different type of formatting. This is common with new drives which frequently come formatted for Windows computers in the NTFS format, which is not comparable with Mac OS. If you can’t copy a file to your hard drive it likely isn’t formatted for the operating system you are using.
