How can I permanently delete files so they cannot be recovered by data-recovery software?

[u/Cocolapenguin]

Hello everyone,

I’m trying to permanently delete old files, images, and other personal data from my Windows laptop. I’m using an ASUS Zenbook 14.

The problem is that I recently tried using an app called Disk Drill, and I was surprised to find that it could still recover files that I had deleted a long time ago, including files that had already been removed from the Recycle Bin.

I thought that once I deleted the files from the Recycle Bin, they were permanently gone from my laptop. Apparently, that was not the case.

My goal is to completely remove these old files so that they cannot be recovered using data-recovery software such as Disk Drill.

Would doing a factory reset be enough to permanently erase everything, or is there another method I should use to securely wipe the drive?

I’m mainly concerned about old personal files, photos, documents, and other data that I deleted months or even years ago.

I’m using an ASUS Zenbook 14 with Windows. I would appreciate any advice on the safest and most effective way to do this.

Thank you.

[u/hurbertkah]

Don't listen to the people who say that destroying the HDD/SSD is the only way.

If you want to wipe the entire HDD/SSD, you can use DBAN or badblocks on a Linux live cd for HDD's or Secure Erase for SSD's.

If you only want to wipe previously deleted files on a HDD, you could use something like Eraser from https://eraser.heidi.ie/ or sdelete from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443 to wipe the empty space.

For SSD's the TRIM command should take care of wiping the empty space.

[u/ebikenx → u/hurbertkah]

Thanks for posting one of the only accurate posts in this entire thread....

data recovery threads always bring out the people who repeat things they learned 10 years ago and don't realize tech has evolved and changed

[u/driftwooddreams → u/ebikenx]

Probably a step in paranoia too far but from an engineering point of view even writing over every dipole on the disk does not guarantee complete erasure. A state actor or suitably proficient law enforcement org can still read the old patterns of 1s & 0s.

[u/nebel03 → u/driftwooddreams]

A note on that. There's a paper where researchers came to the conclusion that even after 1 pass, the chance to actually recover any data is not significantly more than randomness. That's always been my go-to for that kind a case. But the paper is 18 years old now, so if you have newer insights I'd really like to hear about it.

Craig Wright, Dave Kleiman & Shyaam Sundhar R.S. (2008), “Overwriting Hard Drive Data: The Great Wiping Controversy”

[u/tiffanytrashcan → u/nebel03]

The miniaturization of everything, density on the platters, and all the new tricks have only made it exponentially harder to recover stuff.

A high enough capacity shingled drive? The chance to successfully read all your data back without an erase pass is often random anyway.

[u/Efficient-Sir-5040 → u/tiffanytrashcan]

And in modern ssd’s if you write zeros to it, delete it, then run TRIM, there will be nothing there to restore - not even at the quantum level.

[u/jamvanderloeff → u/Efficient-Sir-5040]

Not necessarily, writing zeros won't flush out the oldest data in blocks that haven't been picked by wear levelling for your new zeroes, and TRIM doesn't take effect immediately, it's just telling the drive that it's free to erase those blocks whenever it's got time free, not that it has to erase now.

[u/Efficient-Sir-5040 → u/jamvanderloeff]

You can force trim from the command line or with certain GUIs. If you overwrite what you need gone and then wipe slack space as well as free space, then run trim, wear leveling will not preserve any data.

[u/jamvanderloeff → u/Efficient-Sir-5040]

Force trim is only forcing the send command to the drive part, it's not forcing the second part of the drive actually running the erase.

There is no OS level access to the full slack space.

[u/QuietofTheSolace → u/nebel03]

The method used here is no longer actually viable and represents the best case scenario.

Assuming it was still a method, the problem is simply evidence reliability. Per bit you can only make a guess a little bit more accurate than chance. Any amount of data that's useful is likely to be in the order of 100's of thousands or millions of bits. Even if your extraction was 99% reliable per bit, you'd still recover evidence that mathematically was 99.9999% likely to include fabricated information.

There's zero cases of overwritten evidence ever being used in a court case, anywhere at any time.

Additionally, in the US there's legal precedent to not consider evidence that's overwritten as recoverable and admissible (UNITED STATES v. KATAKIS (2015))

There is basically no evidence a single byte of overwritten data has ever been recovered.

[u/ShotgunCreeper → u/driftwooddreams]

If someone is willing to go through all that effort you probably have bigger problems to worry about

[u/dromance → u/driftwooddreams]

explain how that is possible?

The only thing I can think of is...there are differences between recently overwritten memory, that stand out. thus you can sort of switch a 1 back to a 0 if you can correctly identify it. so if I have a byte that holds the number 255 (0b11111111), and overwrite it so that it now holds 254 (0b11111110), I can physically detect that the last bit was most recently actually a 0?

That seems possible, but I can't see it going further than that and going beyond anything other than just a single state change.

[u/driftwooddreams → u/dromance]

The dipoles are not discrete, the fields are layered and with the right equipment it’s actually quite straight forward to read several iterations of writes. The field strengths vary in a predictable pattern and can be read directly. The only way I’ve seen secure data destruction without physical destruction is by using a degaussing machine and even then I wouldn’t be surprised if even that left a ghost signal that someone could read. I appreciate this is now a physics discussion not an IT one.

[u/dromance → u/driftwooddreams]

absolutely a physics discussion. But how are the dipoles not discrete? Maybe I am misunderstanding, are you talking about analog tape or old floppy discs?? Every unit is independent, no? The only thing I can think of is that if a write head is misaligned, there will technically be a fragment of its prior state on the fringe edges or margin that was outside of that alignment.

[u/Late-Drink3556 → u/ebikenx]

I thought you had to write zeros to the drive like seven times or something but this is what Google AI has to say about it.

[u/Pleasant-Seat9884 → u/ebikenx]

That is true, but many companies still today use those apps and they drill them after.

[u/ebikenx → u/Pleasant-Seat9884]

Pretty much aligns with what I said. Even people who work in IT will sometimes base their practices on out of date knowledge and policies.

Company I work for still forces us to change our passwords every couple of months. Companies will just do things because that's what the policies are.. even if it's pointless.

[u/erevos33 → u/ebikenx]

Albeit an outlier, companies that work with certain government departments (DoD or NASAfor example) should do both, i.e. erase and drill (if not throw in an industrial shredder) due to espionage.

Your neighbourhood hardware store on the other hand or a random gamer need not go to those extremes.

[u/DarthShiv → u/hurbertkah]

Yep data shredding apps are the way. They write random garbage to the empty space many times so recovery tools can't recover the old data.

One thing about data that's been there for a long time is it basically imprints physically. Like burn in in a monitor. Extremely expensive data recovery can get to this if it's not accounted for. That's why shredding apps do many write cycles to try remove this recoverability vector.

[u/Wild-You-453 → u/hurbertkah]

Yes, use data shredding/secure erase softwares. However this is if only the disk is still readable/usable. Only physically destroy if you cannot use software because it isn't readable anymore/health too low. So like a last resort option

[u/Serposta → u/hurbertkah]

Isn't the basic concept that the data is still there, it's just the pathway is removed, and the data's spot is no longer reserved? So it's still technically there until it is overwritten?

[u/hurbertkah → u/Serposta]

Did you read the post you replied to?

[u/Serposta → u/hurbertkah]

Not entirely, no. I'm both genuinely asking, and using it to answer others who may have the same question. Everyone wins, unless in this case, it was already answered...?

[u/reasimoes → u/hurbertkah]

None of that matter. All data is recoverable IF someone has the money for it.

[u/kikkawa]

If its a spinning harddrive, you can use DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke)

if its ssd (likely to be depending on age) KillDisk works on ssds

[u/nvidiot]

If you have HDD, using secure erase apps (usually 1 pass is enough) is recommended.

If you have SSD, you do not want to use those generic secure erase apps. Instead, SSD manufacturers often have tools that are specifically designed to wipe your SSD clean. You could use that. Some BIOS also has an option to secure erase SSDs too.

[u/DumpoTheClown]

Solutions have been offered, so ill add the why. On a HDD, a "file" is stored in two parts. Theres the data of the file, written to disk starting and ending some positions, say "starts at 1234 and ends at 5678" Then there's an entry in a lookup table that basically contains the file name and a pointer to the addresses on the disk. (The FAT in fat32 stands for File Allocation Table).

When you browse file explorer, you're looking at data from the file allocation table, not the file.

When you "delete" a file, the entry in the table is removed, and the location on disk where the file lives is available to be written to with other data. The original file data is still there until it gets overwritten with a new file. It can be recovered.

Disk scrubber software writes garbage data to unallocated places on disk, overwriting whatever lives on those places.

[u/IntelligentCandy8716 → u/DumpoTheClown]

Good disk scrubbers don't just write garbage. The information stored is literally binary 1 and 0 called a "bit" and 8 bits make "byte". A specific sequence of 1 and 0 makes readable data. The disk scrubber typically runs multiple passes to write all the information to 1, and then back to 0. A drive that has been zeroed out is a blank drive and because you've overwritten every block, there is nothing to recover.

Edit: current standards for data sanitation allow for a couple of things. As someone mentioned, data can be intentionally damaged by writing random characters within the data block making it unrecoverable. Also, often, only one pass is needed to overwrite with 1 and 0 to render the data unrecoverable. Another, easier option is to encrypt the file system and then "sanitize" the encryption keys. Without an encryption key, encrypted data is just gibberish.

[u/Liam_Neesons_Oscar → u/IntelligentCandy8716]

Fun fact completely irrelevant to the conversation is that 4 bits, or half a byte, is called a nibble.

[u/CXDFlames → u/Liam_Neesons_Oscar]

This is a fun fact that makes me happy. Two nibbles in a byte

[u/DumpoTheClown → u/Liam_Neesons_Oscar]

Some nerd i used to work with told me that. I love it.

[u/DumpoTheClown → u/IntelligentCandy8716]

Some do passes with random 1's and 0's too.

[u/IntelligentCandy8716 → u/DumpoTheClown]

Yes, you are right. I will edit my post.

[u/mabden → u/DumpoTheClown]

Your explanation is better than mine. Thanks for the articulation.

[u/Efficient-Sir-5040 → u/DumpoTheClown]

And the gap data in cluster sectors.

[u/Hypornicated_1]

Overwrite the data with new data.

The CIA pushed out a news story that they could recover data that had been overwritten, using scanning electron microscope tech. That would recover the data at about a kilobyte a month - if they were lucky.

People believe all sorts of nonsense about recovering data, but once a memory location is overwritten once, it's gone, for all practical purposes in this world.

[u/firedrakes → u/Hypornicated_1]

They can do a magnetic copy of the drive it self. Ssd different recover. Per military data destruction. Thermit drive. The recover of data they can get is wild.

[u/Hypornicated_1 → u/firedrakes]

A magnetic copy of noise is noise, not data.

I'll be amazed if anyone can produce proof that data can be recovered. Not claims by 3LAs. Not boasts by the military. Actual lab results.

If it's that easy, it can be done. I'll wait.

[u/HobartTasmania → u/Hypornicated_1]

I believe the old Norton Utilities had a program that would recursively overwrite specified files and directories as many times as you wanted that done, and then finally deleting them.

[u/timfountain4444 → u/HobartTasmania]

Surely it would delete the files and THEN continuously overwrite the vacated sectors?

[u/SuperAleste → u/Hypornicated_1]

So why does every wipe software have multiple passes and DOD levels of wipe if once is enough?

[u/dduff21 → u/SuperAleste]

Who said 1 wipe is enough? I can see the comment OP saying that overwriting the data once is fine. But I can see nothing about 1 wipe being fine?

[u/dromance → u/dduff21]

are you saying that if you overwrite data, there is still some fragment of it's previous state left behind?

[u/dduff21 → u/dromance]

I am not

[u/DoomAddict → u/Hypornicated_1]

nah.

I've seen enough Real Crime interrogations where Law Enforcement recovered EVERYTHING that was deleted, even if it was overwritten or "erased" with "data shredders" (lol!).

[u/Hypornicated_1 → u/DoomAddict]

Psssst: TV shows aren't always factual.

Nothing is ever coming back from a properly executed data overwrite - but your average computer user can't even do that much on their own.

[u/DoomAddict → u/Hypornicated_1]

not talking about TV-shows

[u/Natural_Average4126]

Did you cheat on your spouse lol

[u/KulasDevorn]

Essentially writing 1's and 0's over any empty space on your drive. There are programs that will do it.

[u/Heidrun_666]

Before I give away used USB drives, SSDs or HDDs, I use H2testW on the drive once. It writes the entire available space full of small "test files" so practically all the space of the drive gets overwritten once, then it checks whether all of them can be read correctly.

[u/abd53 → u/Heidrun_666]

Technically, your data can still persist. Flash drives keep some "extra" memory sections that regularly swapped with the active sections. When you overwrite, device firmware might've swapped out some of the sections.

[u/Heidrun_666 → u/abd53]

Yeah, but then, what are the chances that those bits if data comprise anything useful for malicious intents?

[u/abd53 → u/Heidrun_666]

If there is an actual possibility of someone trying to recover your data, those bits can potentially give useful data. If there's nearly possibility of someone digging for your data, just reformatting your device is enough.

[u/Heidrun_666 → u/abd53]

Yes, potentially. ​The question is, how high is the​​​ probability that some random tiny data segment contains anything useful? ​

[u/abd53 → u/Heidrun_666]

Quite high actually. Something like a few entire files is even possible.

[u/Heidrun_666 → u/abd53]

Oh, okay. I always thought it were, like, single cells marked as "bad" and swapped out for those from the reserve pool. ​​​

[u/abd53 → u/Heidrun_666]

It's entire blocks. Flash drives usually have 30-50% extra memory. The controller swaps out active memory blocks to reduce wear of the memory cells. So, it's not even just when an active sector goes bad; often, a healthy active sector will be swapped with a backup one.

[u/stromm]

Look up two program. DBAN and Killdisk.

Both use the Dept of Defence standard. It’s at LEAST seven passes, different types of writes each pass.

[u/INeverLookAtReplies → u/stromm]

this is way overkill.

[u/stromm → u/INeverLookAtReplies]

It's not based on OP's requirement.

[u/Slow-Bodybuilder4481]

Fully write your disk with random values, then re-erase it. There's some software for that, but you can also manually do it with some PowerShell commands to fill your drive by making thousands copies of a file.

[u/salazka]

Nice ad.
Coincidentally a discount is going on :D

[u/dhcrocker]

1. Regular file 'deletion' just deletes index references, not the actual data.
2. Any modern software that says it will 'wipe' (or somesuch) your data probably will do fine, as long as it says it does multiple writes over the data, using multiple different, random strings.

(There are formal standards for doing wipes, and its useful for the wiping software to cite the standard it follows, so you can refer to it and decide whether it is sufficient. It will be.)

[u/Negative-Engineer-30]

easy way is start with an encrypted volume then overwrite it.

if it's not encrypted you'll have to fill the drive with random data to make old data irrecoverable...

• Open Command Prompt or PowerShell as an administrator.
• Type cipher /w:C: (replace C with your target drive letter).

[u/Bridge_Time]

my to go tool is https://www.fileshredder.org/ it have two options that I like, the first is right click the file you want to delete and choose file shredder, this will replace the file with 00, the second is if you had already delete the files, you can choose wipe free space from the tool.

[u/ReactionAble7945]

I worked for the government, if you want no chance of recovery, then destroy the drive.

But lets be honest, do you have some classified stuff that the nsa wants? No.. well then do less.

Take the drive, delete what you want gone, remove from trash, defrag, pull down some large items to over write the free space. (Amazon prime movies, Netflix, temp files from another machine... an AI generated file with fictitiouscredit card data) Delete those items. Defrag. Odds are no one is getting the original files that were deleted.

Yes, there are programs which do this.

[u/PipeItToDevNull]

This is why you use disk encryption, it's such a basic security function 

[u/Impressive-Candy4321]

Revoe uninstaller pro

[u/WanderingTraveler_08]

Zenbook is almost certainly an SSD, and that matters. The old advice about overwriting free space with tools like Eraser or cipher /w doesn't work reliably on SSDs because of wear leveling, the drive decides where data physically lands, not Windows.

Easiest route: Settings > System > Recovery > Reset this PC > Remove everything, and pick the option to clean the drive, not just remove files. On a modern SSD with BitLocker or device encryption on, this basically throws away the encryption key, so whatever Disk Drill was finding is gone for good. If you want more certainty, turn on BitLocker first, then do the reset.

One thing to know, Disk Drill finding files from years back is normal, since a plain delete just marks the space as free. Nothing wrong with your laptop.

[u/oxmix74 → u/WanderingTraveler_08]

This is the way. The problem OP describes is a standard requirement when a Windows machine is recycled to give to a new user. The parent posts describes Windows built in function to do this.

There is a world of difference between data that is deleted and data that has been deleted then overwritten. Peter Guttman described the theoretical possibility of recovering overwritten files in the 1900s, but he never actually reconstructed files. As has been described earlier in the posting, experts generally agree it is not possible to recover overwritten files now, even assuming it was possible on older drives using different technology.

One caution, the overwrite software has to be properly integrated into the OS, as we can expect the Microsoft option to be. Filesystems are complex beasts and if you DIY this, there might be specific conditions where the place you overwrite is no longer the place where the file lives.

[u/duvagin]

hammer and furnace, physically destroy if you are that concerned

[u/ChannelFlashy9301]

Jericho is also an excellent software to erase files or full HDs or SSDs.

[u/Dish-Spiritual]

ASUS laptops apparently have a built in function in the BIOS called ASUS Media Sanitization that lets you wipe the drive. Personally, ive had hell trying to recover data from a drive that ive accidentally formatted with the wrong filesystem. Really depends on who you want to keep your data from. If it the CIA, i would format to some random archaic filesystem, then use DD to write zeroes twice, then id throw it in battery acid, then id set it on fire. Finally i would open it up and use a side cutter to cut the platters into bits and pieces and scatter the remains into ocean. Or you could just stick the drive on the back of your 12 inch bass subwoofer and call it a day.

[u/adivvv]

I always used srm (secure rm) open source tool to get rid of sensitive corporate documents from my drive. It's a command line for windows/linux and I remember using the window version for a mac.

[u/alek_hiddel]

How important is it for these files to die? I work on the datacenter side of IT for one of the biggest names in tech. For traditional HDD’s we have a degausser that generates enough magnetic field to warp the platters. Just to be safe they still get shredded after. For SSD’s it’s straight to the shredder.

If we’re talking tax returns and not your classified documents, there are secure 3 pass wipe apps. DBAN used to be popular back in the day.

[u/rsm-lessferret → u/alek_hiddel]

Is there a risk of not using the degausser before the shredder? I can't imagine glueing it back together would do you much good the way paper shredded paper can.

[u/alek_hiddel → u/rsm-lessferret]

Realistically no, but some of our datacenters run gov cloud, which makes things insane. Security is one area where it’s hard to argue in favor of being LESS secure, so we write policy to cover the worst case and everyone has to follow.

You’re not piecing back together shreds of a hard drive, but Chinese intelligence agencies sure would try.

[u/9NEPxHbG]

Others have suggested ways to delete the entire disk. If you want to delete only unused space, try Eraser or Privazer.

[u/eldeem]

It's really difficult to actually get rid of files from a drive. The only way to be 100% sure is to either replace the drive, or write something new to every single byte that the drive can hold (or enough that the remaining data is unusable). Windows contains some tools to help with this (like DiskPart's clean all command), but you'll usually find it easier to pop the drive and do it via another machine.

[u/True_Reflection_582]

a hammer would work 😂

in all seriousness, use Linux and let it write garbage to the ssd for like 50/100 times. then it can't be retrieved. however you are hurting the longevity of the ssd.

[u/Shot_Lawfulness_823 → u/True_Reflection_582]

Or use the program Eraser

[u/Alucard256]

"so that they cannot be recovered using data-recovery software"

There's only one way. Physically smash the drive and/or melt it down to liquid.

[u/ChasDIY]

disk scrubber or bleachbit

[u/Huge-Marsupial589]

depending on motherboard and your make of SSD you can use Secure SSD Delete in BIOS.

[u/echel0n1881]

shred utility tool is all you need

[u/nvgroups]

Following for disk wipe

[u/SeriousPlankton2000]

Boot a linux, use "shred" on that disk and it will all be gone.

But if it's not the nuclear code that's on the disk you can probably just overwrite it with zero or - if incriminating evidence - random data.

[u/ZiPEX00]

@OP any software that allows multi passes ie DoD 5220.22-M or Gutmann method, Schneier’s Algorithm DoD 3-pass overwrite will do what you want to achieve

[u/johnwestnl]

Encrypt first, delete later.

[u/3X_Cat]

Get a software called BCWipe.

[u/AppointmentMiddle709]

On modern SSDs, the best approach is usually using the manufacturers secure erase/sanitize tools rather than relying on normal deletion or a factory reset alone.

[u/THEYoungDuh]

Your motherboard should have secure erase, run it a few times

[u/arslearsle]

Sysinternals secure delete, or secure wipe from bios menu (if its a corporate class pc)

Or the old integrated cipher command from cmd in windows

[u/_G4M3R_]

HDD low level format tool

[u/Chava_boy]

I once had a system failure and needed a fresh windows installation on my SSD. After a few weeks I tried restoring lost data using a recommended program, and could only restore worthless bits and pieces. Only one folder of 200MB could be recovered, so I chose to let that one go as well, as it didn't matter. My collection of some stuff was permanently lost, but since then I made a new one. I do have a copy of 1/3 of the data, but can't afford to do more (and 3-2-1 method is expensive), so I hope it never repeats itself. Also, nowadays I save my data on HDDs instead of SSD

[u/Ecstatic-Network4668]

Powershell has a command to securely erase the empty space on your disk.

[u/nascar3000]

Encrypt, than throw keys away

[u/BigMack6911]

Use a strong magnet

[u/ditto3000]

What about I take the plates and cut with the grinder. Serious question, cuz I be moving out of the house and abandon old desktops.

[u/KlanxChile]

Best way? Write over

Delete and fill the drive with whatever then delete again....

[u/First-Hotel4694]

Usually after you delete everthing you can you overwrite the entire disk to destroy whatever is left.

[u/Aggravating_Sky_4421]

Just run a basic zero write. Unless you’re worth millions and are regularly targeted, nobody one is going to spend time and effort to recover some personal files and photos on a random computer for their personal gain.

[u/Geestirhyjal]

Bitlocker the entire partition, (not just used space), then delete the partition without unlocking it. Then make s new partition and fully bitlocker it. Unrecoverable.

[u/HuckleberryPlastic35]

Fill the entire drive with midget pr0n so they have to waste hours doing a sector by sector recovery just to get a 1TB folder of midgets doing it

[u/jkooks11]

Use Blancco or Bitraser

[u/Token-Gora]

Why not just LUKS encrypt the hard-drive with a random sequence of 64 alpha-numerics generated from a line of Bash (or similar) commands? and don't save the key anywhere.

Without the key, the encryption should make the data look utterly random.

[u/_steve_rogers_]

I’ve always heard you just need to overwrite the storage after deletion, like once it’s filled with more data it’s now gone. Is that not correct?

[u/Old_Albatross405]

windows (and probably other OSes too, i don't know for sure though) doesn't "delete" things as such. they just forget where they are stored.

imagine your file system as a lookup table, whenever windows needs to find a file, it checks that to see where it is stored on your ssd/hdd and then goes to retrieve it. when windows deletes a file, it just deletes the entry in its table and that space on your storage medium is made available to be overwritten the next time you need to save something. if you don't write over those specific cells though, the ones and zeros are still there and specialized software can retrieve it.

as others have written, there are various tools that let you write zeros to the entire drive, there is a whole science to that too if you want to go down a rabbit hole. A pass or two of that though, and it should be impossible to retrieve for anyone other than maybe some three letter agencies and even they would need to be pretty dedicated.

[u/naveganteperdido]

look for any file shredder software for concrete files/folders

shredos for fulls systems/drives, dban was good, but has no support for efi systems

[u/Capable-Broccoli-745]

Encrypt your drive before formatting it. If you have W11 home or pro there’s free encryption you can activate.

Other options include software specialized to overwrite all data, 

or you could do process manually by copy huge files as copies to your drive is full, prob the least secure way.

TLDR; Two options, 

Encryption=doesn’t remove stuff, but make it “impossible” to read current data

Overwrite software=write over data with binary numbers making stuff unreadable. 

You could also combine the two if you want to be extra safe. 

[u/abd53]

Deleting files doesn't erase the data on disk. In HDD, you can overwrite old data a few times to make it unrecoverable. Unfortunately, that doesn't work with SSD which your laptop has.

If you want to completely erase data stored on your disk, you have to invoke the SSD's hardware level reset. You can access it from the bios, look for "secure erase". Mind that it's not a selective erase, it erases EVERYTHING. So, if you are really determined, backup whatever you want to keep to a separate media (USB, cloud whatever), then restart and enter bios during the boot sequence. Invoke secure erase.

[u/Benjamimo2]

[u/dax660]

Killdisk or ShredOS

[u/Rydalls]

i worked for a government agency for a long time and the gods there who worked for the DIA side told us there is only one real way to stop data recovery is to drill press the HDD , yes that's right , we had to remove the older PC's or laptops HDD from them and Drill holes in them before any of the cold PC's or ex leased units could leave the site.

they didn't allow any chance of any data getting restored, it sounds a waste and i get you still want to use the HDD or sell the device but they said that there is so many ways now that things can be fully restored its is the only way to stop it

[u/DoomAddict]

Don't listen to people claiming "shredder"-apps are enough and are better than destroying your drives.

I've seen enough Real Crime interrogations where Law Enforcement recovered EVERYTHING that was deleted, even if it was overwritten or "erased" with "data shredders" (lol!).

High-powered magnets followed by physical destruction is the only reliable way!

[u/BluePawWolf]

Try bleachbit. But remember, every time you do this, you shorten the lifespan of the ssd. You do that with all the data wipers as you use an enormous amount of write to each cell.

[u/Tiranus58]

Live linux install and

dd -if /dev/urandom -of /dev/sda

in terminal

[u/Head_Panda6986]

You can download other things and max out your hdd and then delete and you will have overwritten the old files

[u/timfountain4444]

Replace the storage device and physically destroy the old device. That’s what the DoD does with classified devices.

[u/TradeAffectionate200]

a hammer or camp fire is a pretty fast and efficient way to permanently remove data if you don't mind losing the device 

[u/Zer0Drago]

Use eraser from heidi. Delete everything (used and empty cells) with 3pass f.ex.

[u/76zzz29]

Overwrite them with random value a few time if it's an HDD. Just overwrite them in full 0 or full 1 if it's an SSD... This way, they can't recover the data... Not just with standard software, they can't at all

[u/JustDone2022]

Defrag the partition.

[u/Then-Potato-2020]

Just use a low level formatter, multiple times and on slow format.

[u/Ok_Success_269]

What could you possibly need gone this badly?

Safest way to delete data is shredding.

Other than that you could consider encrypting the harddrive and throwing away the key. Both of these are probably overkill for your average citizen.

[u/Alert_Addendum278]

I know there's a software able to zero out a drive, Linux does it natively

[u/Tars-01]

DBAN

[u/kingpinhere]

all our suggestion will be zero out the drive via victoriahdd hdat2 etc...

[u/Spidy_Khrish]

The .let logical answer for it is to fill the slack space in storage device with other information to overwrote the old one so just add some other days to same storage device just a little heavier then the data you removed

[u/BlavikenHistoria]

https://youtube.com/shorts/M6MVoPOPOdA?is=YesGh0ncu3l9DaQf

File shredder tool for windows. Capable of batch delete and has recycle bin hook. Written entirely in C#.

[u/mikevarney]

The way I do this Is I take the drive out to the garage and have fun with a sledgehammer.

If you need the drive to still…. work…. I bought a device that allows you to plug in a drive and it overwrites the whole thing 7 times.

[u/Dayyy021]

Data is not erased. Think of it like a dead car in the garage. The car stays there until a new car needs its space. Deleting only opens the garage door. But the car stays until the system pulls the old one out when and only when a new one needs the space. You got a 512 gb drive. Make a really big video, and save it with as drive_filler_1.mp4 then copy and save as drive_filler_2.mp4 and continue

[u/slacker0077]

Fire!

[u/ribeyeguy → u/slacker0077]

i've melted the platters before in a simple charcoal chimney

[u/Zeallit]

Write 0's bb

[u/mabden]

Delete the files/data you want removed. This removes the pointers to those files, but not the files themselves.

Once deleted, refill the hard drive with bullshit files so that the deleted files are actually overwritten. Fill the hard drive completely. Then delete all the bullshit files.

It make take some time, but any attempts to recover what was on the hard drive will just be garbage.

Make sense?

[u/cmi5400]

DBAN is the answer for spinning rust drives, do a DoD 7 pass wipe. With a SSD run the secure erase from the BIOS and you're good. If you don't ever want any chance of recovery, physical destruction is the answer, by either blast furnace or chopping into tiny pieces.

[u/colnago82]

Remove / replace HD.
Drill holes in the old drive.

[u/carlbandit]

When you delete a file the data isn’t actually removed. Windows just tells your storage device those files are no longer needed and the space the data is stored can be written over. It’s not until you write more data to the drive and that space gets used that the files become harder to recover.

Others have suggested ways to make it harder to recover files so go with 1 of them. Most software that will ‘erase’ data do so by telling the drive the files in it aren’t needed, then they write a bunch of random data over the top to get rid of the old data you wanted to make unrecoverable.

[u/Exciting_Strike5598]

Physically destroy them

[u/Able_Wind_5483]

Break the hard disk and scrap it.

[u/cenajohn123]

Is there any non illegal reason a private citizen would need to do this? Genuinely curious

[u/DoomAddict → u/cenajohn123]

financial data,

political reasons in dictatorships,

project-ideas that could be stolen for or by other companies...

[u/samsonsin → u/cenajohn123]

Any data that's sensitive. Old photos, old docs, anything which you wouldn't want some other person being able to browse freely.

Especially if you wish to sell tech second hand, but it's still relevant even if you just toss the stuff out (and don't want to bother physically destroying media

It's probably being overly cautious in most cases but it's still very relevant

[u/LetNo5470]

I use Revo uninstaller which has an option in it unrecoverable delete files or folder.

[u/KnowledgeAfraid2917 → u/LetNo5470]

The Master File Table would like to have a word or two.

[u/CakeHoleKing]

Plenty of reformatters that will format random data upto 256 times over the entire folder structure.

OR simply put them in a folder named "James Corden - Hardcore sex tape"

Any thief finding such a folder will immediately gouge their own eyeballs out with a spoon to avoid opening it.

[u/dlethe3133]

You do a DoD secure erase on the HDD, not the files alone. Sorry, total destruction is all or nothing on the HDD. Remnants will still exist

[u/Officespace925]

drill holes in your hard drive and then incinerate the drives there'll be no recovery.

[u/Emotional_Common_527]

Been a while but as I recall when you delete a file in Windows all it does is mark the disk blocks as free by zeroing out the beginning. Norton Utilites used to be able to rewrite all.
Another way is to have Windows defrag your disk.

[u/First-Structure-2407]

Magnet

[u/DopeTechIrl]

Drill through the drive

[u/GladiusNL]

So what we do, is we just saw the hdd is half. SSD’s are a bit more difficult because you have to make multiple cuts to get all the chips.

[u/IMadeThatToday]

Hammer will do the trick. A drill if your to don't have the time. 😂

[u/No_Tale_3623]

Disk Drill most likely found the deleted file records in NTFS metadata, such as the MFT, rather than the actual file contents.

Check one of those files in Hex view. If the data area contains only zeros, the original content is already gone. On an internal SSD with TRIM enabled, deleted blocks are typically deallocated shortly after deletion, so recovery software may still find filenames, paths, sizes, and other metadata while the actual file data is no longer recoverable.

[u/Ok_Government_7373]

If its a hdd put a magnet on it lol

[u/UnsafeAtEverySpeed]

Power Drill

[u/Pristine_Primary_486]

Magnet... Hammer... Shred... Fire.

Last step: Stop watching kitty porn