Make sure to clean your storage drives, laptops, smart phones, tablets and anything that may contain confidential files before disposing of them. Whether I throw it away, sell it or give it away, you must first securely delete your data.
This is necessary because it is feasible to recover deleted files from many types of drives.. Data is not always immediately removed from an underlying drive if you delete it on a frequent basis.
USB drives, external hard drives and SD cards
An erasure procedure is required for USB drives and external hard drives. Yes, even if your USB drive contains solid state flash memory, and even though your external hard drive may contain a suitable solid state drive, You must keep this in mind.
TRIM is not supported via the USB interface, which means someone could recover confidential files from an old USB drive after getting rid of it.
To clean an external drive in Windows, no need for a special drive cleaning tool. You can format the drive from Windows, but you need to format “full” but you need to format “Quick format”.
This works on Windows 10, Windows 11 and any other modern version of Windows. From Windows Vista, the full format option was changed to always write zeros to the entire disk to ensure data is completely erased.
Please note that solid state storage only has a limited number of writes. This will reduce the life of your unit., especially for cheap flash drives. You don't want to do this all the time. But, if you are about to dispose of the unit, it's okay.
On a mac, open the app “Disk utility”, but you need to format “Remove” in the toolbar. (but you need to format “Remove”.
By default, your Mac will notice that it will safely erase the drive. To change this, Click the button “Security options”, drag the slider at least one notch to the right until the tool says it will write a pass of random data, and then click “To accept”. but you need to format “Remove” to continue.
Laptops, desktop and internal hard drives
On a laptop or desktop, your internal hard drives should only be cleaned if they are mechanical hard drives or hybrid hard drives. When you delete a file on a solid state drive, the file is automatically deleted from the drive due to TRIM, which helps to maintain the speed of your SSD.
The following tricks are only necessary if you are using a mechanical or hybrid hard drive. Don't do this with solid state drives; it is a waste of time and will cause unnecessary wear and tear on the SSD.
In Windows 10 u 11, but you need to format “Restore” but you need to format “but you need to format” but you need to format. This erases the drive, will ensure that none of your files can be recovered later.
RELATED: How to recover a deleted file: the definitive guide
If you are using Windows 7, Linux or other operating system, you can start your computer from a tool like DBAN. This tool will boot up and erase your computer's hard drives, overwriting them with random data. You will have to reinstall Windows or Linux afterwards before someone can use the computer again, decidedly.
Just one wipe should be enough.
On a Mac with a mechanical hard drive, you can start recovery mode and use the Disk Utility application to remove the hard drive before reinstalling macOS.
Despite this, I probably don't have to do this. Your Mac uses File Vault encryption by default, so reinstalling macOS will ensure the encryption key is removed and file fragments cannot be recovered. Despite this, if you disabled File Vault encryption, cleaning your unit this way is a good idea.
Smartphones and Tablets
Apple iPhones and iPads use encryption, but you need to format “Delete all content and settings” but you need to format. After doing it, your personal data will be inaccessible. All data fragments are stored on the device in an encrypted form and cannot be accessed by anyone.
Modern Android phones also use encryption by default. You can restore your Android device to factory settings to delete your data.
Because the data stored on the device was encrypted before performing the factory reset, data stored on the device will be encrypted and incomprehensible.
Encryption ahead of time also works
Additionally you can enable full disk encryption in advance. When you use encryption, your data cannot be recovered without your encryption passphrase. Leftover data bits and other files will be on the drive in a scrambled and scrambled state. People using forensic data analysis software will not be able to choose any piece of data.
As an example, Chromebooks always use encryption, so simply performing a factory reset will ensure your data is not accessible.
If you have a CD or DVD that you want to erase confidential files from, you can erase it if it is rewritable. Opposite case, be sure to physically destroy CDs or DVDs before disposing of them. This could mean taking a pair of scissors and cutting them into one or more parts.
