How to Wipe External Hard Drive in Windows 10/11? – 4 Ways

Summary: If you are searching for a query like “How to wipe external hard drive?” or “How to delete external hard disk partition data?”, you are at the appropriate pick.

Modern SSDs delete files instantly, unlike old magnetic drives that just mark them as deleted. But external hard drives lack this quick deletion feature, so you must manually wipe them. There are three choices to wipe an external hard drive:

Full format: Erases the entire drive

Cipher command: Cleans only unused space

“Reset This PC“: Wipes your Windows system drive

These Windows built-in tools let you write zeros to an external drive and clear the contents. However, this is not the absolute utility of wiping external drives as the data is still recoverable by advanced recovery tools. Hence, for the permanent deletion of external hard drive data refer to the automated solution suggested here.

Reasons Why People Securely Wipe External Hard Drive

The possibility of deleted files recovery from storage devices largely lies on the type of drive you are using. Traditional magnetic drives with spinning platters merely mark the deleted files as deleted, making the recovery easy. However, this is not the case with modern solid-state drives (SSDs), which use TRIM technology to erase deleted files instantly.

On the other hand, external storage devices don’t support TRIM, which enables you to recover deleted files easily. However, this can prevented by overwriting the entire memory with random 0’s and 1’s. This can be helpful while you are selling or disposing of external hard drives. Now, to do this, you can use the sophisticated data destruction application for a complete wipe.

Method 1 – Wipe Entire External Hard Drive on Windows 10/11 using Full “Format”

If you want to write zeros over an external hard drive’s content, perform a full format. Keep in mind that this will erase all the files available on the external drive. Also, a complete format can’t be successful on the Windows system drive while you are running Windows from it.

This approach is ideal for non-system internal drives, USB flash drives, external storage devices, and any other partitions that you want to wipe. To begin, open File Explorer, locate the External hard drive, right-click it, and select “Format.”

Uncheck “Quick Format” under Format Options to ensure a full format. Since the Windows Vista release, every other Windows OS will perform a full format writes zeros to the entire disk. Adjust other formatting options as needed, but leave them at their default settings if unsure. Next, click on the “Start” to begin formatting, which may take a while depending on the disk’s size and speed. This process will erase all data, so back up important files first.

Remember that this format process will wipe the whole external drive. So make sure to have a backup of the important files before proceeding.

Method 2 – Wipe Only the External Hard Drive Free Space

When you perform the delete operation on a mechanical external hard drive, the data is not immediately erased from the disk. Rather, the space available is termed free space, but the data remains in the disk unless it is being overwritten by a new set of zeros and ones. It can be called an effective way of erasing the remnants of the deleted files.

In this method, you will learn to securely remove deleted files without wiping the complete drive. This can allow you to keep the files you want and delete the rest free space.

We have a way to do this in Windows 10 and 11 by the command line. The cipher in-built command on Windows can wipe the external hard drive’s free space with the overwriting data. Generally, this command runs 3 passes to overwrite the data. The first one is written with zeros, the second with another type of data, and the last pass is of random data. (However, here only one pass should be enough.)

Launch a command-line environment (Command Prompt, or Windows Terminal) with administrator permissions.

On Windows 10 or 11, right-click the Start button or press Windows+X.

Select “Windows PowerShell (Admin)“, “Command Prompt (Admin)“, or “Windows Terminal (Admin)“. Any option will work.

Run the command below in CMD. Just replace X with the external drive letter you want to wipe the free space.

cipher /w:X:\

For example, if you want to wipe free space of H’s external hard drive, change the code to:

cipher /w:H:\

The command shows progress at the command line. Wait for the time being. Here, the duration of wiping depends on drive speed and the amount of free space to be overwritten.

Method 3 – Entire Windows System Drive Wipe

There is a simple way to completely wipe your entire Windows operating system drive. This is the in-built feature i.e. Reset This PC feature on Windows 10 and Windows 11, even though it is not switched on by default.

This method facilitates you to protect your private data when you are selling your PC or disposing of it. When reinstalling Windows to factory default settings, you can choose to erase all data on your system drive. To perform this on Windows 10, begin by going to Settings → Update & Security → Recovery. Next, tap on the “Get Started” option under the Reset This PC. Also, you can press the Windows + I button to instantly open the Settings app.

For the Windows 11 users, go to Settings → System → Recovery. After that, hit the “Reset PC” button under the Recovery Options.

Choose the “Remove Everything” option to erase all your files in Windows during the Reset operation.

Henceforth, pick the “Local Reinstall” or “Cloud Download,” either of the two will work smoothly. However, if you’re unsure which option to go with, we suggest the “Local Reinstall” to avoid the big download.

If the files present on your local Windows OS are corrupted and the Reset This PC is not working, the “Cloud Download” option can be useful. It is observed that the Cloud Download can be faster than Local Reinstall. This is because Cloud Download only needs a fast internet connection to download the installation files. While Local Reinstall do the reassembling from the files on your Computer’s hard drive.

Then, under Additional Settings, choose “Change Settings.”

Enable the “Clean data?” option by setting the switch to “Yes.” With this active option, Windows will “clean the drive” and make it much harder (theoretically, practically impossible) for the advanced tools to recover your data.

Windows will alert you that this process could take several hours, depending on the speed and size of the drive in your computer. Next, tap on the “Confirm” button to reset your Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC.

This process will completely erase all files, applications, and settings on your drive, leaving you with a fresh Windows installation without any of your files. Make sure to back up all the important stuff before proceeding.

Indeed, Windows refers to this process as “cleaning the drive” rather than wiping it. This differs from the traditional Windows meaning of “cleaning” a drive, which involves removing all partition information instead of wiping the drive.

How to Wipe External Hard Drive on Windows 10/11? Quick Tech

Using the above methods to wipe, still leaves some chances for recovery by advanced forensic tools. As a result, the best way to wipe the data completely from the external hard disk is by using a professional tool i.e. SysTools data wipe software. It has robust algorithms with different passes to erase the external drive before selling or disposing of it.

This tool will do the operation to overwrite the 0’s and 1’s multiple times. With each iteration, it becomes more difficult to recover the original content. In short, the application will overwrite the residing data with its new data multiple times to make the data beyond the clutches of recovery.

Salient Features of this Erasure Tool

• This software can erase data from different storage devices such as HDDs and SSDs in PCs, laptops, and servers. After the successful completion of the data sanitization, it provides the resulting report.
• It contains several levels of passes – Low Grade, Medium Grade, and High Grade passes. For instance: Zero (1 Pass), Random (1 Pass), Peter Gutmann (35 Passes), Russian – GOST-R-50739-95 (3 Passes), and more.
• You can even address the classified data spills and decommission issues.

Final Takeaway

In this write-up, we have come to know that there are many reasons why users need to wipe the external hard drive. Also, we find that there are several manual solutions to wipe external hard drives on Windows 10 & 11. Generally, by using these easy-to-find methods erase is not complete as its leaves scope to recover the deleted data to a larger extent. Hence, due to this, we recommend the fastest and most reliable way to wipe your external hard drive by the use of the automated tool.