On Windows 10 or Windows 11, Microsoft has once again made it easy for users to wipe a hard drive. How to wipe a Windows 10 or Windows 11 laptop When you choose to erase data, make sure you click on the ' thoroughly' option rather than 'quickly', just to be sure that everything is deleted. Finally, choose Remove Everything and Reinstall Windows. Head to the Start screen, find the Charms bar, click on Settings and then hit Change PC settings. It's much easier to wipe a hard drive in Windows 8 or 8.1.

If the machine is going to see new use, you can then reinstall Windows 7 from any disc or bootable USB stick with Windows installation files, although you'll likely want to upgrade this to Windows 10.ĭBAN can also be used to wipe any drive running Windows or indeed Linux, as it doesn't need to run in any particular OS. From here you simply follow the prompts and wait for the machine to work through the reset process, which will securely delete everything. Once this USB flash drive is inserted in the laptop you want to wipe, restart the machine and then boot from this drive from the BIOS screen. It's downloadable as an ISO image but you will need to extract it onto a bootable USB or disc in order to use it as a boot device. Although the legacy OS is now obsolete, you might still run into older devices with the OS still installed. Wiping a laptop running Windows 7 shouldn't be too difficult.

Let's start with the oldest OS versions you're likely to encounter.

Wipe a laptop clean