How to permanently delete files on WD External Storage Device

[Question22]

It seems if you only format your drive, files may be recovered. I am transferring my device to another user and want to permanently delete all my files with no possibility of recovery. How can I do that ?

 

[Thanesh s]

Use DBAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3ujhEWAlRw
http://www.dban.org/

 

[Kiril_Petkov]

There is a lot of free software that will wipe your HHD w/o option of recovery, most of them are just writing "1" on all clusters 5 times. So when you choose the software be sure what exactly will do on your HHD before use it.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Question22.

You are right that a simple format won't delete the data and should not be that hard to be recovered. This is because basically after you reformat a partition or a whole drive, the data is still intact (as long as you don't write anything over it). It's just that the file system has changed and the OS does not "see" the data because of that.
If you want to be sure that nothing will ever be recovered from that drive, you don't need to go and look for 3rd party software, as you could use WD's DLG (Data Lifeguard), which is WD's diagnostic tool, but it also supports low level format (a.k.a. Write Zeros). This basically overwrites each single sector of the drive with zero, making your files impossible to recover (for this you should go with "full erase"). Note that this could take quite some time depending on the drive's size, because as I've already mentioned, it goes through each sector of the drive individually. Here's how to do it: How to low level format or write zeros (full erase) to a WD hard drive or Solid State drive.

You could also do that via DISKPART by using CMD (Command Prompt) without downloading anything, so let me know if you want the instructions for this option.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD