Free PC Cleaners
Want to give our grandson old laptop & would like to clean the hard drive & delete files,What would be the best way to go about it?Thanks
Forum Discussion
Files that are deleted and emptied through the Recycle Bin become part of the drive's free space available for reuse. To make the files unrecoverable, just over-write the free space. You don't need an external utility or app, many of which just use the same Windows command, as the function is already built-in.
If you wanted to wipe the entire drive including Windows OS, then hard drives have firmware built-in called ATA Secure Erase. This makes all drive data unrecoverable. It's what I use as its hardware based, not software such as DBan, so very fast. The last 250G hard drive I wiped using Secure Erase took less than 30 minutes.
If you wanted to wipe the entire drive including Windows OS, then hard drives have firmware built-in called ATA Secure Erase. This makes all drive data unrecoverable. It's what I use as its hardware based, not software such as DBan, so very fast. The last 250G hard drive I wiped using Secure Erase took less than 30 minutes.
