How to Use HP Secure Erase to Wipe HDD Or SSD in BIOS

Navigate

• HP Secure Erase for SSDs/HDDs

• How to use HP Secure Erase to wipe an HDD/SSD in BIOS?

• Alternative Tool When the drive is locked or Secure Erase is not working

• 1. Steps to wipe an HDD

• 2. Steps to clear an SSD (Without shortening lifespan)

• Conclusion

HP Secure Erase for SSDs/HDDs

When HP users need to sell their hard drive or SSD or to eliminate viruses and malware, they will erase the hard drive using Secure Erase in BIOS. HP Secure Erase is an option for HP administrators to protect their sensitive data from being lifted.

HP erasing methods will overwrite all data on a hard drive with DoD (Department of Defense) standard, which overwrites a storage device with 3 passes. In this way, all data on an erased drive will be fully removed and basically cannot be recovered.

Next, this post will illustrate how to secure erase a drive in HP laptop or computer.

How to use HP Secure Erase to wipe an HDD/SSD in BIOS?

✍Note: HP allows you to wipe an HDD or SSD. But we do not suggest you erase an SSD in this way. Because it will shorten the service life. You can go the next part to employ an alternative tool to erase an SSD securely.

Step 1. Power on your HP computer. Press “F10” repeatedly as soon as the HP logo appears on the screen.

Step 2. And you will enter BIOS setup. Then select the “Security” tab.

Step 3. Choose “Hard Drive Utilities” or “Utilities”, “Hard Drive Tools”.

Step 4. Choose “Secure Erase” to launch HP Secure Erase.

Step 5. Choose the drive from the listed storage devices.

Step 6. And this program will warn you that this operation will erase all data on the hard drive, confirm the operation and click “Continue”.

After a few minutes, the hard drive will be erased.

Alternative tool when the drive is locked or Secure Erase not working

However, lots of users reported that they are failed to wipe a hard drive via the HP Secure Erase option. For example, a hard drive can be locked when you try to erase it. And you will need the BIOS password to unlock it. If you forget the password, you can’t wipe an SSD/SSD in HP BIOS.

Fortunately, there is powerful HP wiping software- AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional that can help you out. This reliable tool provides the following 4 erasing methods to completely remove data on your HP laptop:

● Write sectors with zeros: It is also called “zero-filling” method. It replaces data with a series of zeroes to stop recovering data by most software-based software.
● Write sectors with random data: This method overwrites data with random data, which is more secure than zero-filing way.
● DoD 5220.22-M: It is the method HP Secure Erase uses. And it writes multiple patterns on every sector to make it very safe, and it is used by lots of HP users.
● Gutmann: It is the most secure way to a hard drive here. It will prevent all software-based file recovery tool from retrieving any information. But it takes a long time.

In addition, this software comes with a feature named “SSD Secure Erase” that erases various solid-state drives in Windows 7 PC without damaging lifespan and performance. Next, you can download the Demo firstly, and refer to the following steps to see how to use it.

Steps to wipe an HDD

Step 1. Launch this reliable tool, you can view all disk information on the main interface. Right-click on the hard drive your will to erase, and choose “Wipe Hard Drive”. 

Step 2. The 4 wiping methods will be listed on the window. you can use “DoD 5220.22-M” like HP Secure Erase, or other wiping methods. And choose overwriting times.

Step 3. And in the main interface, check the pending operation, and click “Apply” to execute it.

✍ Note: As for wiping the system disk, you will be asked to “restart into PreOS mode” or “restart into Windows PE mode”. If you don’t have Windows PE, choose the former operation.

Steps to erase an SSD

At present, “Secure Erase SSD” is only working in the Windows 7 environment. Before proceeding, please connect the SSD with a PC running with Windows 7.

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, click "Wipe"> “SSD Secure Erase” on the top side of the interface and click “OK” on the pop-up window.

Step 2. Choose an SSD, and click “Next”.

Step 3. Check the information of the SSD, and click “Next”.

Step 4. If the SSD is in a frozen state, the program will unable to perform the task. You will need to unplug the SSD and reconnect it to relieve the frozen state.

Step 5. Click the “Next” to continue the operation.

Conclusion

Now you have known how to use the HP Secure Erase option to wipe a hard drive. It is wise to erase all data on a hard drive before you give it away.

When the option is not working, you can turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, especially if you want to clear an SSD. And this software also has other functions to manage storage devices, such as, recover files from SSD, create partition, format partition.

If you want to perform the operation on Windows Server systems, please try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.