How to Wipe All Personal Data from Windows 10 Computer?

Summary: Allowing another individual to have access to all of your personal information might be dangerous. That’s why it’s so important to get rid of all of your personal data from your device before you sell it, recycle it, or give it to a friend or family member. Therefore, in this post, we will explain how to wipe all personal data from Windows 10.

A knowledgeable IT expert understands that removing a file does not truly delete it from your hard disk. It truly deletes the file’s index from the File System, which implies that just the file’s access is erased. Even after the recycling bin or garbage is emptied, the files remain.

Consider the following:

When you remove a file, you truly conceal it’. Similarly, when you do a fast format on a hard disk, the old file system is replaced with the new one but no files on the storage medium are destroyed. Thus, deleted, destroyed, and files on a formatted disk can be readily retrieved using data recovery software, unless they have been overwritten.

Recovery, on the other hand, is not always required. Occasionally, you must permanently delete data in order to protect your privacy and personal information. Therefore, before selling, donating, or discarding storage devices, it is critical to securely wipe them, not only delete sensitive contents, to ensure that no residual data is left on the device that may be retrieved using typical off-the-shelf recovery tool. So, without further ado, let’s get to the subject.

How to Wipe All Personal Data from Windows 10?

There are several methods for erasing personal data. Below, we’ll discuss two of the most often used ways for wiping personal data from a Windows PC.

Method 1 – SDelete

It is a command-line application for Windows that performs safe deletion of files, directories, and empty spaces on the storage disk which may contain previously erased data. SDelete complies with one of the most recognized Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standards, DOD 5220.222-M, which ensures that erased data is permanently removed.

To safely remove your secret and personal data from a storage media, follow these steps:

• SDelete.zip may be downloaded from Microsoft’s official website.
• It may be extracted to the Desktop or any other place.
• Navigate to the folder into which the SDelete utility was extract.
• While holding the Shift key, right-click within the folder.
• ‘Open Command window here’ is the option. A command prompt window appears. Type delete and press Enter to display a list of available alternatives.
• Locate the file or folder you wish to remove and type sdelete –p 2 “C:Usersravi.singhDocumentsSecret Info.docx”
• Utilize the –S or –R parameters to delete folders and subdirectories recursively. –P specifies the number of overwrite passes; the default is one.
• For instance, type sdelete –s –r –p 4 “C:Usersravi.singhDocumentsMySecretFolder”
• This command recursively deletes the MySecretFolder directory and its subdirectories containing files in four passes (or 4 times).

This Method Has Some Drawbacks

• One incorrect command will result in the destruction of your machine. Therefore, utilize it with caution.
• You must locate the files and directories produced by various applications and system programs on the C: (system) drive’s numerous places. This is a challenging undertaking, and you must conduct extensive study on each app to determine where they store your activity data.
• Each time you wish to remove a file or folder placed in a different location, you must write the whole command.

Method 2 – Use the Best Professional Software

As we can see the above method has many limitations. As a result, we would like to propose that you use a professional program to accomplish this. Disk Wipe Software is one such utility. This program allows you to completely erase all personal data from your Windows 10 machine. This program guarantees that it will totally delete your personal data without causing you any inconvenience. Also, the tool is helpful to wipe Windows 11 computer and more. This application’s user interface is really intuitive. This amazing utility is quite simple to use.

Consider the working process of this software

Download and run this application on your Windows machine.

         

For specific files and folders, select “files & folders,” alternatively select “Logical Drives.”

Next, select Wipe Options and select “Free Space” if you just want to delete free space on the drive, or “Total Space” if you want to erase all data on the disk.

By clicking on the “Drives” choices, you can now pick which drives you wish to delete data from.

To proceed, click the Next button.

Now that the tool window with the chosen data has shown, choose the folders and files you want to delete and click next.

Select “Filter Options” to erase certain files from the hard drive and apply the filter.

Then, from the drop-down menu, select the wipe techniques that best suit your needs.

When you press the wipe button, a warning notice will display, and you must click the yes symbol again.

The Abstract

In today’s article, we addressed the question of how to wipe all personal data from  Windows 10 machine. Using the methods indicate, this work may complete quickly and easily. In addition, we propose that customers utilize any professional program.

Also Read: How to Permanently Erase Browsing History?