

- #Use permanent eraser on external hard drive how to
- #Use permanent eraser on external hard drive full
- #Use permanent eraser on external hard drive windows 10
- #Use permanent eraser on external hard drive free
Windows 7: Download the Windows 7 OS and then the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool here.įor either Windows 10 or 7, follow the instructions to create the bootable USB drive. Windows 10: Download the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool here.

Make sure you have an external USB (also called a thumb drive or flash drive) ready. If not, you’ll need to create a bootable Windows USB drive. If you have a Windows 10 or Windows 7 startup DVD, you can skip the next paragraph. Note that this process will delete the OS and all files, but it won’t permanently erase them. That means your primary drive won’t be in use, so we’re able to work on it.

To get around that, we’ll run Windows from an installation DVD or a USB drive. You can’t format the primary drive while it’s running, for the same reason that you can’t repair a car engine while driving. Your C drive (C:) is your primary drive where the operating system (OS) is located.
#Use permanent eraser on external hard drive how to
How to format a primary drive (C:) on Windows But it’s a little different if you’re formatting the primary drive, a secondary internal drive, or an external hard drive. DBAN wipes multiple drives in parallel, but doing it in a VM allows for the computer to continue being used instead of being tied up for days, and it also ensures DBAN can only see the drives you want to wipe, so it helps prevent mistakes.Formatting a hard drive on Windows is largely the same whether you’re using Windows 10 or 7. What I ended up doing is setting up a VM with DBAN and assigning the drives I wanted to wipe to the VM. To anyone looking to do multiple drives that happens to read this: as I said, I tried several programs, and none of them will do it except one, which you have to buy. To the devs, in case you read this: don't use a forum for support then not let people post in it (shouldn't need to be said, but there it is). I signed up on the forum to inquire about it, but then couldn't post, so that was a massive waste of time. I see no good reason why that shouldn't be possible, and searching the forums it seemed the dev intended to add it in v6, but that was years ago and it's now on v6.2. being able to wipe multiple drives simultaneously.

The only thing I don't like about it is the lack of parallelization, i.e.
#Use permanent eraser on external hard drive free
Of them, one or two would probably be suitable replacements for this one if it were to stop working, but I would say Eraser is probably the best interface and it's free, portable, and can do files, free space, and entire drives. I tried several others, and they ranged from horrible to ok. As some others have mentioned (complained about), it does take a long time, but that's just the nature of what it's doing, and all programs are going to be slow if they're not, they're not doing a good job. It did randomly quit the other day in the middle of a job, which I luckily checked on it and noticed, though I'm not sure if that was Eraser's or Windows' fault.
#Use permanent eraser on external hard drive full
And the forums are only full of people with similar problems as you are with few to no solutions.ĭecent program that does the job with minimal fuss. However, when wiping free space I will get tens of thousands of error notifications that the cluster tips of each file in Free Space wasn't erased.Īnd it's free software, so don't expect any technical support. Usually, only protected files of the operating system are forbidden from having their cluster tips erased. Usually you want to erase the cluster tips because even if you wipe the free space, as long as the cluster tips exist the files can still technically be reconstructed by a skilled individual. Then there's the fact that it doesn't erase the cluster tips on ANY of the files when wiping free space. Sometimes the file names are a single number such as "0". When erasing the recycle bin only, 100% of the time it erases no files because "the file names are too long". I don't know if this program "used" to work, but I've been running Windows 10 and this is the crappiest most hyped free space removal tool I've ever seen.
