How to COMPLETELY Wipe Your Computer’s Hard Drive [@RedkeyUSB Tutorial]

RedKey USB promises to make data recovery “impossible” with some advanced techniques to remove all your personal data before selling or recycling a computer.
► Buy on Amazon: https://geni.us/RedkeyUSB (when available)

Learn how to securely erase a hard drive using the Redkey USB. This hard drive eraser software comes on a dedicated USB stick and makes wiping one or more computer hard drives quick and easy.

If you’re planning to sell, recycle or give away an old computer then I’m going to show you a quick and easy way to ensure all your private and personal data is securely erased from it so that it’s completely unrecoverable, using this nifty little device, the Redkey USB. 

First, shut down and turn off your computer then insert the Redkey USB into a USB port.

Now, we need to boot up your computer from that USB drive. Press the power button and then press F12 or Delete repeatedly – it’ll vary from computer to computer but what we’re looking for is either Boot Menu or Boot order – or anything similar. On most computers it’ll flash up telling you which button you need to press and if you’re not quick enough, don’t worry – just press and hold the power button to turn off, and then try again.

On this old Dell laptop it’s F12 that I need to press, which gives me this boot order screen so I’ll select USB Storage Device. If yours doesn’t label it like that, choose USB media drive or anything similar.

If you don’t have options for a little Boot menu like this, then you may need to go into your computer’s BIOS settings and hunt around for a setting named Boot Sequence or, again, something similar. On this Dell laptop, Boot Sequence is found under System. Hitting enter lets me go into those settings and then I can press the Up and Down arrows to move USB Storage Device to the top of the list, meaning the computer will load up whatever’s on the USB drive before looking to its own hard drive containing, in this case, Windows 10. Once that’s done you can Exit setup, saving changes and your computer will restart.

So, after that and regardless of which route you took to get here, you should see a Redkey BIOS boot menu like this, saying Redkey detected and giving you the option to accept the Default settings, which I’d advise in most cases, or override them if you need to and you know what you’re doing.

After a short pause, the Redkey system should start loading like this – and you’ll notice again, the warning that Redkey permanently destroys data. So if you need to have your data backed up, make sure that’s definitely done as you won’t be getting anything back!

Redkey will then scan your system and detect all the hard discs installed. If you have a desktop PC you may well have more than one hard drive, but in most laptops there will be just one.

You might, like here, have a frozen drive in which case it will guide you through unfreezing it for you, which involves the screen going blank for a while and then when it comes back on you click the button to confirm the screen is back on.

After that it will just get going with obliterating all the data on there unless you stop it before the countdown concludes, if you want to view or change the settings and what method it’s going to use to do the wiping.

If you do that, you can use the built-in HEX viewer to see the raw data on your hard drive before it’s wiped, and if you click on disc options you can choose from one of the predefined standard algorithms for data erasure. For this, I chose Zero Fill which will, you’ve guessed it, fill the hard drive up with zeros in place of all the data. But that’s not the only erasure option, as you’ll see there are 25 Data Wipe Standards to choose from so you can select a specific algorithm if you need to to comply with a policy in your workplace or environment.

So after pressing Start it took about an hour and a half on this old laptop’s hard drive, but obviously that time will vary depending on the size and speed of your hard drive, how many drives you’re wiping and how powerful the rest of the computer hardware is. It has a screensaver and will play some nice gentle sounds whilst you’re waiting.

According to its makers, the Redkey USB can utilize the powerful (but generally unknown) secure erase commands that have been built into the firmware of hard drives by manufacturers for some time now. ATA commands are usually inaccessible to users as non-user accessible areas but Redkey can circumvent this restriction as it is based on Linux.  

This low-level hard drive stuff is outside of my main area of expertise or interest so I’ve left a link in the video description if you’re interested and want to read up more.

Once it’s done you’ll see a Matrix-style animation and it’ll proudly proclaim DATA WIPED!

If you like you can then view the raw data on your hard drive using the HEX viewer and, yup it’s all gone and overwritten with zeros.

Click Exit and then Power off to shutdown your computer and remove the Redkey USB. You’re now ready to install whatever operating system you like on the computer or do whatever else you like with it – with no trace of any of your private and personal data left behind.

More reading – ATA Secure Erase commands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#HDD_passwords_and_security

Important Note: All claims of suitability and phrases such as “secure”, “unrecoverable” or any similar words/phrases to that effect should be considered to be references to claims by the manufacturer of the Redkey USB and Switched on Network / Innobella Media is not making any claims, guarantees or assertions as to the suitability of this product for use. This video is produced for informational purposes in the hope that it will be interesting and/or entertaining.

Please consult the data wipe process certification by ADISA, the Asset Disposal and Information Security Alliance:
https://redkeyusb.com/pages/certified-data-erasure
https://adisarc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ADISA_Redkey_USB_ADPC0094.pdf
https://adisarc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Claims-Test-Report-ADOC0094-Magnetic-and-SSD-Test-Level-1-V1.2.pdf

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