If I tell you that in this article I am going to guide you on how to erase a hard drive, you might think that this is a useless post as everyone knows how to erase data from the hard drive. When everyone knows about deleting and formatting a hard drive or any other storage device then why I am writing this post?
Actually, there is a huge difference between deleting the data and erasing completely or wiping the data from any storage device. In a previous article, I have mentioned in detail what happens to data when it is deleted from the storage media and how is it possible to recover deleted data.
If you want to know how to recover deleted data from iPhone or Mac you can check my other article. Recovering deleted data is a huge blessing from IT experts for many users but it might be a huge risk as well and many users wish that their deleted data shouldn’t be recovered at all.
For example, if you are selling your PC or Mac device which has a record of your clients or customers, it is possible that your competitor might buy that PC or Mac from the market by chance.
In this case, the data of your clients and customers might be recovered by your competitor. This is for sure what you never want for your customer’s security and for your own business as well.
If you have your private data, your bank credentials, passwords to your social profiles, bank accounts, and other important family data on a device that you are going to sell out, there is a huge risk that some IT expert can recover that data from your hard drive even if you format that drive.
So, in this case, you have to completely wipe a hard drive. You can consider IT Asset Disposal service for safe hard drive disposal.
What is the Difference Between Deleting and Wiping the Data?
Without going into technical details, the simple answer to the above question is that if you delete the data from a storage media, it can be recovered easily by using a paid data recovery tool or software. Whereas wiping the data or in more technical words Data Erasure is a process by which data can’t be recovered by any data recovery tool after it is deleted.
How to Completely Wipe a Hard Drive?
An easy and non-technical way to completely wipe a hard drive is to format it once. All your important data will be deleted from that hard drive whether you are using Windows or Mac. After that rewrite your hard drive with some other data which is not very important.
For example, after deleting and formatting your hard drive you can store some movies and songs into your hard drive and then again delete that. When you do this, if anyone tries to recover the data from that hard drive, he/she can recover the movies and the songs but not the important data that you have deleted previously.
It is obvious that this method is not technical and it will take a lot of time as well when you have a huge hard drive. Moreover, this is not 100% secure.
Use AweEraser for Mac 2.0 or Windows To Wipe a Hard Drive
If you want to be on the safe side and don’t want to use the above-mentioned non-technical and non-secure method then you should use a professional AweEraser for Mac. This is the best Mac data eraser or I should say “Data Erasure Software“.
It will technically destroy all your digital data it is your customer’s record, your company’s data, your bank details, or your personal data, nothing will be left on your hard drive and no one will be able to recover that data by any means because AweEraser will permanently wipe the hard drive.
AweEraser is available for both Mac and Windows and it is easy to use. For more details about how it works and how you can use this software, you can visit their official website.
