For a twice pass, you can input “p:2” instead.

At the prompt window, type “ format f: /fs:NTFS /p:1” command, and hit on “Enter” to format the f drive with the NTFS file system and write zeros to every sector of the drive for a single pass. Click “Start” button, input “cmd” in the “Search” box, right click the pop-out Command Prompt icon and select “Run as administrator”. It adopts a special format command to achieve the purpose of writing zeros to the hard disk. Zero fill hard drive via Command PromptĪctually, Windows itself comes with a free zero fill hard drive utility – Command Prompt. Here, we would like to share you with two free yet powerful zero fill hard drive tools, both of which are proven to be able to write zeros to hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7. Two free zero fill hard drive utilities you can try Therefore, when it comes to completely erasing sensitive files from hard drive, writing zero to hard drive is much more reliable than formatting hard drive, which just makes data invisible to the operating system and can be easily restored by special recovery tools. It is a process of replacing existing data on hard drive with zeros, so as to prevent most hardware-based and all software-based recovery methods from extracting information from the drive. This method is also known as the Single Overwrite method and called zero-fill erase or zero-fill. Writing zero to hard drive is one of the popular data sanitization methods nowadays. So, any good zero fill hard drive utility recommended? Thanks!” What is zero filling hard drive? I know that Manufacturers provide this in their retail box but I am looking for a utility that will work with any hard drives. “I am looking for a utility to write zeros to hard drives to erase all my private information before selling or donating to others.

Best free hard drive utilities