AOMEI Partition Assistant
How to Wipe an Xbox One Hard Drive on Windows PC?
How to wipe an Xbox One hard drive if you might sell it in a few days? In this post, you can learn how to completely wipe Xbox One hard drive with detailed steps.
By Lucas / Updated on May 12, 2023
About Xbox One
Microsoft created the Xbox One home video gaming console which was announced in May 2013 as the Xbox 360's replacement and the third base system in the Xbox line of video game consoles. The gadget was advertised by Microsoft as an "all-in-one entertainment system," thus the name "Xbox One." It was an eighth-generation system that mostly competed with Sony's PlayStation 4.
The initial Xbox One model was replaced in 2016 by the Xbox One S, and a high-end variant known as the Xbox One X was introduced in June 2017. The system is presently being replaced by the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, which will be available on November 10, 2020. All Xbox One systems will be manufactured by the end of 2020.
Do I need to wipe my Xbox One before selling it?
If your Xbox One has been collecting dust or has been experiencing problems that need troubleshooting, you may have considered selling one or both. It's the buying season, and now is the ideal moment to sell your system to a consumer who is in high demand. Usually, users have 2 options: sell it or use that HDD on Windows PC.
The thing is if you’re going to sell your Xbox One or give it to another user, you need to pay attention to your private data. Make sure all data is cleaned before selling it.
How to wipe an Xbox One hard drive?
Method 1. Reset your Xbox One for selling
Warning: All accounts, stored games, settings, and home Xbox affiliations are deleted when you reset your system to factory defaults. Anything that is not in sync with the Xbox network will be lost.
Step 1. Press the Xbox button to open the guide.
Step 2. Select Profile & system > Settings > System > Console info.
Step 3. Select Reset console.
On the Reset your console? screen, you'll see 3 options, the last one is “Cancel”, so we don’t list it here.
• Reset and remove everything.
This option resets the console to factory settings. All user data, including accounts, saved games, settings, home Xbox associations, and all games and apps will be deleted. Use this option when selling or gifting the console, or as a last resort in some troubleshooting cases.
• Reset and keep my games & apps.
Use this option as your primary choice when troubleshooting. It resets the OS and deletes all potentially corrupted data without deleting your games or apps. In some cases, if a corrupt game file is causing the issue you're troubleshooting, you may have to choose Reset and remove everything, but you should always start with Reset and keep my games & apps.
Step 4. Select “Reset and remove everything”. Confirm your choice, and your Xbox will begin the reset operation.
Method 2. Completely wipe Xbox One hard drive for reusing on Windows PC
How to use an Xbox One hard drive on a PC if you wish to reuse your Xbox hard drive on your computer as a data disk or give it to another user?
Of course, there’s another way to help you thoroughly wipe your Xbox One hard drive.
AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is a disk and partition management tool for Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP users to efficiently organize their devices. It has a feature called “Wipe Hard Drive” which supports you wiping all data on the hard drive and overwriting random data on the target disk to prevent data retriever tool.
To completely wipe an Xbox One hard drive, you can take it out and connect it to your Windows PC and download this tool to do a thorough clean.
After you connect your Xbox One hard drive to your computer, you can download the tool and start to wipe it.
Step 1. Install and launch the software. Locate the Xbox One hard drive and right-click on it to select “Wipe Hard Drive” from the drop-down menu.
Step 2. In the pop-up mini window, choose a proper method to wipe Seagate external HDD according to your specific requirements.
1. Fill sectors with zero: wipe the hard drive contents by overwriting them with zeros. Each bit present in the disk is replaced by a zero value, hence the name zero filling.
2. Fill sectors with random data: fill the disk with random data instead, making it harder for recovery software to find any meaningful data. It is considered more secure.
3. DoD 5220.22-M: a software-based data sanitization method used in file shredder and data destruction programs to overwrite existing information on the hard drive for 3 passes. It can prevent all software-based file recovery methods and most hardware-based recovery methods from lifting information from the drive.
4. Gutmann: wipe the hard disk and overwrite the existing information for 35 passes to ensure the data are securely sanitized.
Step 3. Click "Apply” to confirm the operation and click “Proceed” to execute the pending operations.
Then the Xbox One hard drive will be wiped thoroughly, you can format it and reuse it on your computer.
To sum up
This is how to wipe an Xbox One hard drive. Now Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are popular among all gamers, if you don’t know how to deal with your old Xbox One, reusing its hard drive may be a nice choice.
AOMEI Partition Assistant is a versatile tool for all Windows users, it has the Server Edition for Windows Server users and there are many other useful features such as converting to GPT/MBR without data loss, converting file system without formatting, moving installed programs to another disk, etc.
