How to Perform Hiren's BootCD Disk Wipe on Windows

The Necessity of Disk Wiping

Do you want to replace or upgrade the hard drive on your computer? Or are you getting ready to sell your old laptop or PC? In the era of high-speed updates and iteration of electronic products, I believe that many users will encounter the same situation. We all know that hard drives are hardware components that store all digital content, and they are used as standard storage solutions for computers and various electronic devices.

Whether you want to sell your computer or replace your computer's hard drive, there is an important step that cannot be ignored - disk wiping. Some reasons are listed below:

◑ Protect your information from being leaked or misused. Before giving your hard drive or PC to someone else, you may need to wipe the hard drive to ensure that your personal data has been completely deleted and cannot be recovered.
◑ Restore their computer to factory settings. Some people completely wipe the hard drive to make the computer look like new or upgrade the operating system.

How to Wipe Drives with Hiren’s

Hiren’s BootCD is a collection of utilities installed on a bootable USB or DVD you can use to fix many problems related to your computer. It does not contain any pirated software, it contains only free and legal software, including BCD-MBR Tools, Hard Disk Tools, Windows Recovery, and other tools. If you encounter hard disk failure, computer virus infection, forget a password or accidentally lose all data, then Hiren’s BootCD will be your savior.

In this part, I will show you how to perform Hiren’s BootCD disk wipe on Windows. In order to use Hiren's BootCD PE, you need to download an ISO file, which is a disk image, once you burn it to a DVD or USB, you can use it to start your computer.

Part 1. Create Hiren’s Bootable USB and Boot from It

1. Plug your USB into your computer and make sure it can be detected. Download Hiren’s BootCD ISO file from its official website.

✍Note: This process will erase all data on the USB, so please make sure to back up the files on the USB device as needed before proceeding with the steps below.

2. Choose a burning software to help you burn ISO file to USB. Here I take Rufus as an example. After the installation is complete, start the burning software and perform the following operations one by one.

• Select the USB device from the Device drop-down menu.
• Select FAT32 for the file system.
• Check the Quick Format box, then change the option next to Create a bootable disk using to ISO Image.
• Select the little CD icon next to this box and browse to the location of the ISO file in Hiren’s BootCD folder.
• Give it a new name if you like, and click Start when ready.

3. After the burning process is complete, restart the computer. Press a special key to enter the BIOS settings (Some computers may be Esc, Delete, F2, F6, F11, or F12). Set Boot (boot sequence) to USB. Then return to the main BIOS interface, and select Save and Exit.

4. Then, restart the computer and you will enter the main interface of Hiren’s BootCD.

Part 2. Hiren’s BootCD Disk Wipe via Low-level Format Tool

In order to completely delete all data on the hard drive, we are going to write over it with zeroes. We can use Hiren’s BootCD low-level format tool to perform disk wiping. Before formatting, be sure to back up all important data on the drive to be formatted. Here are the detailed steps:

1. From Hiren's BootCD menu, open the Utilities folder and go to Utilities -> Hard Disk Tools -> Security. Then double-click the HDD Low Level Format Tool.

2. Then select which drive you want to format and click Continue.

3. In the LOW-LEVEL FORMAT tab, click FORMAT THIS DEVICE in the lower right corner.

4. Next, a warning window will pop up, prompting you to confirm the hard drive to be formatted. Then click Yes to begin Hiren’s BootCD disk wipe.

Alternative to Hiren’s BootCD Disk Wipe - Easier and Faster

The above steps are how we format hard disks with Hiren’s BootCD, allowing us to give away our computer with no worry of people recovering our data. But when using the HDD low-level format tool to erase the disk, there are a lot of preparations, which seems a bit troublesome. After all, most users are not professionals, and the operation is relatively cumbersome.

In this case, I will introduce you to a more convenient disk wiping software—AOMEI Backupper Professional. You can install it on your computer like a standard program without creating a bootable USB, which saves you a lot of time and energy. It can help you safely clean up all data on hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. You can use it to wipe unallocated space, selected partitions, or the entire disk. After wiping, the data cannot be recovered.

🌟You can also use it to create bootable media in advance to help you successfully start your computer in the event of an accident. Learn how to perform a disk wipe via AOMEI Backupper in the following tutorial.

Step 1. Click the download button below to install this software on your computer. For server users, try AOMEI Backupper Server. 

Step 2. Launch AOMEI Backupper, and navigate to the Tools tab on the left menu. Then select Disk Wipe on the right interface.

Step 3. Then select your desired wiping type, here we select Wipe disk. It will delete all partitions and wipe all sectors on the disk. Then click Next to continue.

Step 4. Select the hard drive you want to wipe and click Next to continue.

Step 5. Next, choose Fill sectors with Zero (Safe, Quick) wiping method and hit Start to begin the wiping process.

✍Tip: Safer wiping methods come with more passes and slower wiping speed. You can choose the one that suits you best according to your situation.

Final Words

You already know how to perform Hiren’s BootCD disk wipe on Windows. Since you cannot install Hiren’s BootCD directly like a standard program on your computer, you need to burn its ISO file to a CD or USB. Then use the built-in HDD low-level format tool to wipe a disk. The whole operation process is a bit troublesome.

Fortunately, you can use AOMEI Backupper to erase the disks/partitions for reuse or wipe unallocated space to free up space. It also has many professional functions, like clone, backup, restore, sync, etc. For example, it can help you transfer the system to another hard drive. What are you waiting for? Download it and try it.