It’s an awful feeling when your computer crashes. Seeing that blue screen of death or the ever-spinning loading wheel to nowhere signals the death of your device. Or does it?
Here we show you how to wipe your hard drive to try and salvage your equipment and tips on how to backup your data so there are no worries in the future.
How To Wipe Your Hard Drive
You’ve done a hard reset, you’ve erased your cookies, you’ve cleared your history, and run a virus check. You’ve done everything suggested to save your computer and are now left with the last resort.
Maybe you’re simply selling your laptop and want to make sure your private info isn’t on there. All of this requires you to reset your hard drive and start fresh.
Wiping your hard drive means that you are erasing all of the information. This isn’t the same as performing a reformat hard drive Mac or any reformatting. This is the next step that takes you back to square one.
How To Wipe A Computer with Windows
Depending on the version of Windows you are using this process will vary slightly. However, it is mostly the same regardless of version.
You will typically go into your settings and choose “Remove Everything” from the updates and security menu.
The prompts will guide you through the next steps and allow you to start with a fresh new computer.
For specifics on a variety of Windows versions check out this blog.
How To Wipe The Hard Drive On A Mac
Regardless of the type of Mac, you’re using the process is the same. You’ll want to follow these steps:
- Turn off your computer
- Press the power button and immediately hold down the “command” and “r” keys
- When the apple logo appears, find the OS X Utilities List and find the Disk Utility. Click continue.
- Select the disk you’re erasing and click the erase button
- Make sure the security options are selected to thoroughly erase the hard drive and not leave any of your info on there.
After these steps, you should be left with a shiny, like new, Macbook.
Avoiding Future Data Loss
In order to avoid losses from having to wipe your hard drive in the futur,e you’ll want to invest in a solid external hard drive. The last thing you want is to unexpectedly lose all your data. Even though you could potentially use raid recovery services to get it back.
You can learn how to format an external hard drive so that it only saves what you want it to and not every single thing. Or you can have it save everything, it’s up to you.
It’s always a good idea to periodically backup your device on an external hard drive so that you never lose your data. Emergencies arise, accidents happen, anytime your computer could crash. Don’t be caught in the lurch.
You can also use a cloud based service like Google Drive or iCloud to backup your documents and programs.
You Can Do This!
Now that you know how simple this process is you don’t have to be worried about it anymore. From now on you will have an external backup of your data and be able to troubleshoot your device completely.
Interested in other ways you can fix your electronics yourself? Check out some of our other blogs here.
