How to Easily Reset PC Remove Files and Clean Drive

Why Reset PC Remove Files and Clean Drive?

Nowadays, people are more and more demanding for data security and just deleting and formatting does not completely guarantee that data will not be leaked because data recovery software can easily recover formatted data.

Therefore, a thorough drive cleaning is necessary to remove the data from the system and make it unrecoverable. This article summarizes for you the following situations that require you to choose to remove files and clean drive when resetting the PC.

• Your computer's hard drive is running slow and you want to speed it up.
• You want to refresh your computer and need to reinstall the system.
• You need to sell or transfer the computer you are using now to someone else.

Backup System before Resetting the PC

Since resetting your computer will completely delete your system and all its settings and data, if you want to keep your data but want to replace your hard drive or computer, it is recommended that you use the free backup software AOMEI Backupper Standard to backup your system in advance before resetting your computer to prevent data loss. This way, when you need it, you can always use this system backup to quickly restore and use your system as before.

• You can choose to backup your system to different destination paths according to your needs, including HDD, SSD, USB flash drive, external disk, NAS, network location, cloud, etc.
• When you set it up, it will auto backup the system. You can also set up an email to notify you that the backup task is complete.
• Besides Windows 11, it also supports various Windows operating systems, such as Windows 10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista, etc.

Next, you can download and install this software. Then follow the graphic tutorial below. If you are a Windows Server user, you can choose AOMEI Backupper Server.

Step 1. Open the software and click Backup > System Backup.

Step 2. It will select system partition and boot-related partitions automatically. And you just need to select a destination.

Step 3. Click Start Backup to backup the Windows system.

Notes:

• Options: You can write comments, choose the compression level for your system backup or set email notifications.
• Schedule Backup: This feature allows you to set the frequency of your backup, such as Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Event trigger and USB plug in. The professional version supports the last two features.
• Backup Scheme: You can select different backup methods. And you can upgrade to AOMEI Backupper Professional to enjoy the differential backup method which can easily restore your scheduled backup. After the upgrade, you can also enable automatic backup cleanup feature to save disk space. 

How to Reset PC Remove Files and Clean Drive

Once you have backed up your system, you can follow the steps below to reset your computer, remove files and clean drive. This can completely delete the data to prevent the risk of data leakage. The following graphic tutorial uses Windows 10 as an example. You can learn how to delete files from all drives in Windows 10.

Step 1. Go to the Start menu and select Settings or you can Press Win+I to open the Windows Settings.

Step 2. In the Settings window, select Update & Security.

Step 3. Select the Recovery in the left navigation. Start the process by selecting Get Started.

Step 4. Windows will prompt the page, where you need to select whether you want to keep your files or remove everything from the system. Select Remove Everything.

Step 5. In this step, you will be asked to select the target operating system that you want to delete. Select Windows 10 and continue.

Step 6. Now you see a page that is confirming whether you want to clean the drives or just want to remove files. Select Remove Files and Clean the Drive. It will clear all the information from your system and sectors of the hard drive, making it unrecoverable ever again.

Step 7. Confirm all your operations, click Next and select the Reset button. It will reset your complete pc to factory settings.

Summary

Reset PC remove files and clean drive can better prevent data leakage, because if you just delete files or format your computer, your data may be easily recovered by recovery software. If you want to keep your data but also clean your drive, you can backup your system with the free backup software AOMEI Backupper Standard before resetting your computer.

In addition, this software also offers the Universal Restore feature, which helps you to restore system backups to computers with different hardware. There are more useful features for you to discover and you can download this software to explore them yourself.