![]() ![]() In fact, any method of destroying the hard drive platter is sufficient, including sanding the platter after being removed or shattering it (as shown here). You can destroy a hard drive yourself by nailing or drilling through it several times, making sure the hard drive platter is being penetrated each time. 1), destroying a hard drive makes recovery "infeasible using state of the art laboratory techniques and results in the subsequent inability to use the media for storage of data." Most of the standards that exist to erase a hard drive mention several ways to physically destroy one, including disintegration, grinding, pulverization, incineration, melting, and shredding. To start the Disk Cleanup tool, either run the Cleanmgr.exe file, or select Start > Windows Administrative Tools > Disk Cleanup. Just as there is no way to extract the written information from a burned piece of paper, there is no way to read the data from a hard drive that is no longer a hard drive.Īccording to the NIST Guidelines for Media Sanitization (800-88 Rev. Physically destroying a hard drive is the only way to absolutely and forever ensure that the data on it is no longer available. If you don't, you risk exposing sensitive personal data that you previously deleted-data like social security numbers, account numbers, passwords, etc.Īccording to most governments and standards organizations, there are only three effective methods of erasing a hard drive, the best of which depends on your budget and future plans for the hard drive:Ĭould be dangerous without professional help. ![]() The most responsible thing you can do before recycling a hard drive, or even disposing of one, is to completely erase the hard drive. However, all the data is still there and, unless you truly erase the hard drive, can be recovered using special software or hardware. Remember that erase, delete, wipe, and shred are technically different terms. Since the OS can't see the data, the drive looks empty when you look at its contents. To truly erase hard drive data forever, you'll have to take some extra steps.Ī common way to "erase" data is to format the hard drive, but you don't actually erase the drive of its data when you do this, but instead only erase the location information for the data, making it "lost" to the operating system. The standalone Disk Cleanup tool is still included, but deprecated in favor of the new interface.If you want to completely erase a hard drive, it's not as easy as deleting everything on it. Starting with Windows 10 version 1803 (RS4), the capabilities of Disk Clean-up are incorporated into Windows 10's Settings app. In addition to the categories that appear on the Disk Clean-up tab, the More Options tab offers additional options for freeing up hard drive space through removal of optional Windows components, installed programs, and all but the most recent System Restore point or Shadow Copy data in some versions of Microsoft Windows. If after file compression, a user wishes to access a compressed file, the access times may be increased and vary from system to system. Infrequently accessed files are compressed to free up disk space while leaving the frequently used files uncompressed for faster read/write access times. This option provides a systematic compression scheme. Īside from removing unnecessary files, users also have the option of compressing files that have not been accessed over a set period of time. But notice, that if you clean this category it would be impossible to uninstall current Windows update version. It allows to free up a few gigabytes of space. One of new categories is “Windows Update Cleanup”. In Windows 10 and 11 you can also choose an option “Clean up system files”. The option of removing hibernation data may not be ideal for some users as this may remove the hibernate option. For instance, 'Temporary Remote Desktop files' and 'Temporary Sync Files' may appear only under certain computer configurations, differences such as Windows Operating System and use of additional programs such as Remote Desktop. The Disk Cleanup utility is a very simple tool that allows you quickly delete stuff like temporary and cache files so you can free up space on your hard drive(s). ![]() The above list, however, is not exhaustive. Removal of unused applications or optional Windows components.There are a number of different file categories that Disk Clean-up targets when performing the initial disk analysis: The utility searches files that are no longer of any use, and then removes the selected unnecessary files. It was first introduced in Windows 98, but has now been deprecated and replaced with a modern version in the Settings app, although it still exists as a legacy tool in Windows. Screenshot of Disk Clean-up in Windows 11ĭisk Clean-up ( cleanmgr.exe) is a computer maintenance utility included in Microsoft Windows designed to free up disk space on a computer's hard drive. ![]()
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