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EthanBrown's avatar
EthanBrown
Iron Contributor
May 08, 2025
Solved

How to completely wipe a laptop with Windows 11/10?

Hi, I'm planning to sell/recycle my old Windows laptop and want to make sure all my personal data is completely erased. I heard that just formatting the drive isn’t enough to prevent data recovery. ...
  • Mieowo's avatar
    Mieowo
    Aug 18, 2025

    I've been in a similar situation before, selling an old Dell XPS 13 with an SSD system drive and a large HDD. I was also concerned that simply formatting the drive wouldn't be safe, as recovery software could still retrieve the files. In the end, I used a tool like Dr.Wiper to perform a full drive wipe, which overwrites both the SSD and HDD multiple times, completely erasing any remaining data.

    I followed this tutorial: Worked for me

    https://www.gicmodo.com/how-to-permanently-wipe-a-drive

     

     

Mieowo's avatar
Mieowo
Iron Contributor
Aug 18, 2025

I've been in a similar situation before, selling an old Dell XPS 13 with an SSD system drive and a large HDD. I was also concerned that simply formatting the drive wouldn't be safe, as recovery software could still retrieve the files. In the end, I used a tool like Dr.Wiper to perform a full drive wipe, which overwrites both the SSD and HDD multiple times, completely erasing any remaining data.

I followed this tutorial: Worked for me

https://www.gicmodo.com/how-to-permanently-wipe-a-drive

 

 

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