Three methods to wipe only C Drive

by William / Thu Nov 29 2018

Many hard drive manufacturers have their own software to retire the hard drives, Seagate is one of them, the SeaTools program is the one designed for this purpose, the tool can be used to wipe SED drives and overwrite other Seagate hards, we’ll simply introduce how to use this tool and also provide the better alternative method

Seagate SeaTools for Windows main interface
Seagate SeaTools for Windows main interface

Requirements:

Although it listed its own brand, this tool actually supports other hard drives of other manufacturers

Steps:

  • Install SeaTools for Windows
  • In the main interface select Basic Test and then click Advanced Tests, confirm and press F8
  • Select SED Crypto Erase
  • Enter the PSID number, which can be found on the hard drive label
  • Press F8 to erase
Seagate SEDs
Seagate SEDs

Check the official guide on how to use SeaTools for Windows

NOTE: If the Seagate hard drive you’re connecting is not in the list, not the SED drive, you can still use the Overwrite Erase option in the SeaTools, which uses the one-pass overwriting scheme to make sure data clean

Seagate SeaTools for Windows limitation: SeaTools won’t allow us to erase boot drive

If you need to wipe the system drive, SeaTools for DOS should be the solution, this is the command prompt tool running from a bootable CD. Download the ISO file and burn it to CD, then run it. The command tool can do all the operations that built-into the Seagate SeaTools for Windows tool, and it can do even more

SeaTools for DOS
SeaTools for DOS

Check the official guide on how to use SeaTools for DOS

SeaTools alternative

The official tool is good enough to retire hard drives of this brand, but modern computers or laptops are coming with at least two disks: one SSD for the operating system, one HDD for data storage, maybe using the same brand, but for most of the cases, many manufacturers use different solutions, and we have situations to wipe C Drive sometimes. That’s why we need an alternative software which has no brand-limitations

Data Wiper, the portable wiping program, is the right alternative, it

  • Support All Brand’s disks, HDD, HHD, SSD, and other storage media
  • Support to wipe C Drive and the boot disk
Data Wiper main interface
Data Wiper main interface

When coming to the hard drive retirement, the wipe boot drive function is handy, it saves the effort of creating bootable wiping tool, check the guide on how to wipe only C Drive for more info

The design of Data Wiper is intuitive, different sections are marked by numbers, each number means a different step, follow 1,2,3 and to select a target, choose a wiping scheme, click on the drive/disk, and click Wipe, confirm, that it, simple to follow, right?

Disclaimer: Macrorit is not responsible for lost user data. Backup import data before confirming.

Wipe recycle bin and free space

That’s how Data Wiper works like Seagate SeaTools for Windows, wipe the entire disk, including or without the boot drive. You may have noticed that there are two more options in Data Wiper section 1: Recycle bin and Free space only, options may not be used for retiring disks, but often used for daily data cleaning, especially in the business environment, knowing that the Delete operation is not enough to ensure data safe, wipe recycle bin and free space are more reliable operations to secure private or sensitive files

Data Wiper wipes hard drive free space
Data Wiper wipes hard drive free space

Overwrite methods

Seagate Overwrite Erase function provide 1-pass zero overwriting methods, let’s check out the wiping schemes in Data Wiper, the following six different wiping algorithms are built-in methods, 3 of which are data sanitation standards,

  • Fill with zero (1-pass)
  • Fill with pseudo-random (1-pass)
  • Fill with zero and one (2-pass)
  • DoD 5220.22-M (3-pass)
  • DoD 5220.28-STD (7-pass)
  • Peter Gutmann’s Algorithm (35-pass)
Wipe recycle bin function in Data Wiper
Wipe recycle bin function in Data Wiper

For home users, the default setting Fill with zero is enough, the rest of algos are for companies with specific Data privacy laws and policies

Data Wiper Download

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