If you ever find yourself in a situation where you want to boot in legacy mode (legacy BIOS), then this guide is of help: Luckily, Rufus already creates a EFI USB stick which works fine with most UEFI firmwares, so you don't have to boot in legacy mode. The UEFI is often configured in such a way that it is not possible to directly boot software from a legacy USB stick. Modern computers run a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). Make sure that there is no important data on your USB stick because it will get deleted during the process.Īllow your computer to boot from USB sticks Just download the latest Rufus release and latest ShredOS release to create a bootable USB stick with ShredOS. With Rufus you can install ShredOS on your USB stick and make it bootable.

ShredOS is a great and minimalistic OS which incorporates nwipe and lets you get started right away. To accomplish this task, you can boot an operating system from a USB stick. To be able to wipe the operating system from your hard drive, you must first start another operating system running on another drive. If you want to delete your primary hard disk it often includes deleting your operating system as well. Install software onto a bootable USB stick Nwipe offers great deletion algorithms and can be booted from a USB stick through ShredOS. There is, for example, the Samsung SSD Magician Software which offers a 'Secure Erase' functionality only for certain Samsung SSDs or Microsoft's Surface Data Eraser which has been designed for Surface devices and requires a 1.4 GB download.įortunately, there is also very good free wiping software such as nwipe (just 6 MB in size). Many applications are either paid solutions, have a limited number of applications, or cannot run on all devices. The variety of hard drive erasing tools makes it difficult to make a choice. In this article, I am showing you how to nuke all of your data according to such a standard.ĭownload a free and versatile erasure software There are several data erasure standards, like the DoD 5220.22-M from the American Department of Defense, that define how data is securely deleted.

In order to guarantee irrevocable deletion, it is recommended to erase the entire contents of your disk and overwrite it several times with random data. Simply deleting your sensitive files via the system menu is often not sufficient as professional data recovery tools may be able to restore them. When selling your computer or returning it to your employer, then you should make sure to securely erase the data of your hard drive to prevent unauthorized access to it.

Secure erase hard drive