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4 ways to securely erase SSDs and HDDs before recycling
Whether recycling through local channels or selling a drive or PC, you'll need to ensure it's wiped to protect yourself from someone else accessing personal data. A quick format won't cut it here. We need to perform some heavy cleaning to ensure no data can be recovered without going to great lengths. But your passwords, photos, and browser history aren't generally worth the effort. For the most paranoid, the best way to protect your data on an old drive is to keep it and repurpose it for something else, but this includes purchasing a replacement. Let's take a look at some of the best ways to safely wipe a drive.
We know you plan to recycle the drive (or entire system) but it's worth bearing in mind these methods will wipe the drive entirely and make it almost impossible to recover your data. Make sure to have adequate backups in place before recycling your old drives.
Use tools included with your OS
Default OS tools are good enough
Windows and Linux both have the capabilities to manage SSDs and HDDs through formatting and creating partitions. You don't need to install any third-party software. Simply fire up the respective disk management tool and select the drive you wish to wipe. Clearing the OS drive and starting fresh can be done through Windows but Linux will require you to create bootable installation media to reinstall the OS. Either method can fully wipe the data on the OS drive, creating a fresh system ready to go.
Your EUFI/BIOS can even wipe a drive
Clean a drive at the hardware level
If you don't wish to use the OS to reset itself and have bootable installation media at hand, the UEFI/BIOS may have a tool available for cleaning connected drives. Though the precise location of these tools will vary depending on the manufacturer and model, you can wipe drives at the hardware level using this method. Note that there's no way to transfer data from the drive(s) within the UEFI/BIOS so be sure to take everything off before booting into the software.
Darik's Boot and Nuke
BOOM and your data's gone
This powerful software is fantastic for clearing drives. Darik's Boot and Nuke is essentially a bootable tool that can erase data securely on both hard drives and SSDs. It can automate the process of removing system BIOS locks, dismantling RAID, providing digital certification of erasure, and overcoming drives that shoot out false positives about internal erasure processes. It's the swiss army knife of drive-wiping tools and should be in your arsenal if you frequently clear SSDs and HDDs.
Replace the SSD/HDD with a new one
Great for wiping a PC before sale
No one can recover data from a drive that has no data to begin with. This method is the best process of wiping a system before selling it. Simply buy a new drive, swap the old one out, install an OS of your choosing, and repurpose the old drive for another PC, or build a NAS and create a home lab for some cool projects.
Best SSDs in 2024
From 2.5-inch SATA drives to more advanced M.2 NVMe drives, these are the best solid-state drives you can buy right now.
Erasing an SSD vs. HDD
Hard drives store data differently from solid-state drives, which is why you mustn't use HDD-specific tools on SSDs. Doing so could cause problems for the drive itself. All the methods in this guide will work on HDDs and SSDs, though I recommend checking your manufacturer for available cleaning tools, especially for SSDs. These can be handy for fully wiping a drive.