In order to restore Windows 10 back to a pristine state you will have to follow the set of instructions which can be found in the applicable selection you just clicked on. Simply go to Start>Settings>Update & Security>Recovery and click Get Started and choose the applicable selection. It doesn’t work with solid state drives, however, so if you need to wipe an SSD, DBAN’s developer recommends Blancco Drive Eraser (which is available as trial version and costs around A$30). A third-party tool like DBAN is also the only way to securely wipe a computer running Windows 7, Vista or XP, which don’t offer the same tools as Windows 8 or later (see below).īut DBAN doesn’t need to run in any particular operating system, so it can be used to wipe just about any computer with a traditional hard disk drive. And among the free tools available, we recommend DBAN, which offers a number of advanced data sanitisation methods. Use a third-party data destruction toolĪ specialised data destruction tool is the most secure way of wiping a computer, barring destroying the physical drive itself. Windows 10 has both features and adds the ability to backup and restore system images. Mac OS, of course, offers Time Machine or you can copy files manually. You can use the Windows Backup feature in Windows 7 or File History in Windows 8.

To backup you can simply connect an external drive to the laptop and drag files and folders to it. Once you have connected the external drive to the laptop you want to wipe, you can check that it is big enough to store all the data you need. If everything is stored on one drive (usually the C: drive in Windows, right-click on the drive icon to see how much data is taking up space there. You will need to figure out how much storage you need.

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