

Right-click on the volume you want to wipe, and click on Format. Here’s how the Disk Management tool looks like. Click on the search result or the open button. Open the Start menu and type in ‘Disk Management’. Your drive is now fully clean and ready to be used again. Once the wipe is complete, you should see a message confirming the same. Keep in mind, a thorough wipe will take a lot longer than a quick format. Tip: For a more secure data wipe, untick the ‘Quick Format’ option and then click on ‘Start’.

If you want to do a quick data wipe, without messing with other options, click on the ‘Start’ button. You should see a small ‘Format’ popup open with a bunch of options. Ours has three drives, out of which, we’ll be using the ‘Data’ drive for this guide.Īll you need to do is right-click the drive that you want to wipe and click on ‘Format’. You should now see all the drives connected to your PC. You’ll see a window titled ‘File Explorer’ open up. Note: This method will only work for secondary drives on your system and not your boot drive. The process merely takes a couple of seconds and is perfect for when you want to make room for new files on your hard drive. This is undoubtedly one of the simplest and quickest ways to wipe a hard drive. Method #1: Using the right-click context menu Use one of the guides below that best suits your current situation and requirements. You can format a drive in multiple ways depending on the type of access you have to your system.
#DISKPART CLEAN DISK WINDOWS 10 HOW TO#
Related: How to Map a Drive in Windows 11 How to format a drive on Windows 11 or 10 Let’s take a look at the methods to wipe a hard drive in Windows 11. Close any applications or files that may be running from the hard drive that you’re trying to wipe.If you’re using a laptop to wipe the drive, we recommend connecting your laptop to power as some methods may take a long time to complete.Make sure you’ve copied all the contents of the drive to another location, preventing any data loss.What to do before wiping a hard drive?īefore you wipe your drive, there are a couple of things that you need to take care of. Whatever the reason, let’s take a look at the prerequisites to wiping your hard drive.
#DISKPART CLEAN DISK WINDOWS 10 PC#
Or maybe you just want to set up your PC from scratch with a clean installation of Windows and fresh partitions for your hard drive. Another reason for wiping the drive could be to simply gain more storage space for your new files. The more obvious reason behind wiping a hard drive is to flush all of your personal files and applications from the drive, making sure they can’t be recovered by data recovery tools - after a factory reset or not. How to create new volumes and partitionsīefore we jump to the methods, let’s take a minute to understand why you should wipe your hard drives.How to completely format a drive on Windows 11 or 10.Method #3: Using Diskpart in CMD (command prompt).Method #1: Using the right-click context menu.How to format a drive on Windows 11 or 10.
