Regularly, there are situations when it is necessary to restore personal and service files that were accidentally deleted or located on the media. The opposite situation, when you need to delete data from the HDD so that no one will ever see it, is less common. However, if you decide to transfer to someone the hard drive on which confidential data was stored, they can be permanently deleted.
Instructions
Step 1
Routine deletion and even formatting does not destroy the data, it only changes the information about which files were written where. The data is easy to extract. Therefore, the old HDD can be subjected to the so-called low-level formatting, which will really erase all data. When you restart your computer, you need to hold down the Delete or F1 key, enter the BIOS menu and find the 50h command there, which will format the hard drive.
Step 2
New hard drives are formatted at a low level only at the factory before commissioning, because their design is much more complex. Since low-level formatting is not applicable to modern HDDs, and the 50h command will only overwrite your data with zeros, you need to use software with the data wiping function. Multiple rewriting will make reading deleted information problematic. To do this, you need to install a utility like Victoria (item Erase), HDDScan, Eraser HDD or MHDD. Auslogics' BoostSpeed software also features multiple disk sector rewrites.
Step 3
There are special utilities that replace low-level formatting. It is better to download such programs from the official website of the manufacturer of a particular hard drive. There are also universal utilities such as HDD Low Level Format Tool and SeaTools for DOS.
