How to Wipe Hard Drive in Windows 7 using Command Prompt?

The hard drive is a storage device that can help you store all kinds of data, such as, your photos, videos, music, documents, programs, etc. And you still can use it as a system disk to start a computer, in this situation, the operating system, boot partition(s) like system reserved partition, and other necessary drivers are required.

It helps a lot in most cases, but sometimes you need to wipe the hard drive in Windows 7 using a command prompt, which is very useful for system administrators to perform unwanted tasks or scripts. This might be because you want to erase the laptop hard drive to fix the failure or for donating or selling, etc. Anyway, you can learn how to make it using the command line in this article. Aside from that, an easier way will be introduced.

Wipe a Hard Drive in Windows 7 from CMD

Here you will use Diskpart clean all to wipe a disk leaving it unallocated and not initialized and then recreate the partition and specify the file system of the disk. After that, you can reuse this hard disk to store or backup your important files to protect your data. 

Notes:

• Diskpart clean all: This command deletes all the data on the disk and specifies every sector with zero value. This makes the data on the disk is difficult to recover.
• Format: It allows you to specify a file system for a hard disk and then format it again. Thus, you don’t need to worry about data leakage.

Then, let’s get the detailed steps to wipe a hard drive from cmd: 

• Step 1. Run cmd as administrator. Then, type Diskpart in the command prompt window and hit Enter.
• Step 2. Type list disk to see all the available disks on the computer.
• Step 3. Type ‘select disk n (disk number)’ to select the disk you want to wipe. Then, press Enter to continue.
• Step 4. Type ‘clean all’ and press Enter to delete all the files and folders completely and leave the disk space unallocated.

• Step 5. Type ‘create partition primary’ and press Enter to recreate a partition with the unallocated space.
• Step 6. Type ‘format fs=ntfs’ and hit Enter to add a file system of this disk.
• Step 7. Now, the disk has a partition with the file system, you just need to type assign and hit Enter to add a drive letter for it.

Wait until the process completes, you can open this formatted disk in the Windows File Explorer and do what you want, such as, use it to backup files you want to protect. 

This method is very useful if you are familiar with the command prompt. But if not, you may feel it’s not easy to understand and operate, because one simple parameter error may result in data loss.

Then, is there any easier way to wipe a hard drive in Windows 7? 

The answer is YES, you can use a free hard drive eraser like AOMEI Backupper Standard to erase the hard drive. It’s very flexible, you can use it to wipe unallocated space, partition(s), and entire disk with different disk wiping methods. The free version only supports “Fill sectors with Zero”, but it’s enough to wipe any data on the disk. 

But if you want a more thorough way to wipe a disk, you can use its professional version and 3 other disk wiping methods, including “Fill sectors with random data”, “DOD 5220.22-M”, “Gutmann”. Among them, the last method can wipe a disk 35 passes, you can imagine how difficult it is to recover.

Easier Way to Wipe Hard Drive in Windows 7

Here you will use hard drive eraser AOMEI Backupper Standard to wipe a disk in Windows 7 with its Disk Wipe feature, below are the detailed steps:

• Step 1. Install AOMEI Backupper Standard and open this tool. Then navigate to Tools and choose Disk Wipe.

• Step 2. In the wiping type window, select one between Wipe partition(s) or unallocated space on the disk and Wipe disk. To wipe all the data on the entire disk, select Wipe disk and click Next to continue.

• Step 3. Then, you will be asked to select the disk you want to wipe, select it and click Next.

• Step 4. Here is the last step, you will see 4 disk wiping methods, select Fill sectors with Zero and click Start. It will start to wipe your disk and the time depends on the amount of data on your disk.

Notes:

• This feature currently doesn’t support wiping dynamic disks.
• This software only supports wiping your current system disk in reboot mode and you cannot boot the computer as normal. Thus, it’s suggested to take this disk outside your computer and perform this process on another computer.

Now, you may already know how to easily wipe a disk in Windows 7 with the help of a free hard drive eraser AOMEI Backupper Standard. Also, this software can be used to secure erase HDD in Windows 8/8.1/10 and the previous system.

Besides, this software is still a free backup software that helps you make an exact copy of your files and keep track of changes made later. To ensure data security, you can choose to make 3 backup copies, keep them in two different locations, preferably one copy off-site, backup files to OneDrive, for example. 

Cloud drive is one of the safest ways to protect your data, because it can avoid data loss due to computer failure, such as viruses, system crashes, disk collapse, etc. Thus, if you have multiple cloud drives, it’s suggested to transfer files between them, move files from Dropbox to Google Drive, for example. To make it, you need a cloud backup service that supports multiple clouds, such as, CBackup.

Summary

That’s all for how to wipe hard drive in Windows 7 using command prompt and free hard drive eraser AOMEI Backupper Standard. Honestly, the latter one is easier and suitable for most users, you just need to follow the steps given above. And it also supports all kinds of backup solutions to help you protect your computer, such as file backup, system backup, disk backup, schedule backup, etc. Why not have a try?