Overwrite Windows 10 disk

[mikodo]

Hello everyone.

I'm hesitant to ask this because of the danger it poses to readers. I'm on my 91 year old father's computer. He is going into a nursing home in the next couple of weeks and the family wants me to delete the hdd. I used Windows for 6 mo ~10 years ago, but then came to Ubuntu. I no longer have a computer of my own, nor any Linux disks to use Linux tools.

I want to overwrite the disk soon with a single pass. Is Windows Diskpart.exc an appropriate command for the task?

https://www.disk-partition.com/artic...rite-4125.html

Thanks.

[oldfred]

Do not know Windows, but any Linux with hdparm will let you use a drive native erase command.

https://tinyapps.org/docs/wipe_drives_hdparm.html

[mikodo]

Hey Fred, nice of you to post. I'll look at your suggestion later, (and no doubt coming from you, I'll use it).

[brown1918]

Hello, Mikodo, in the link given by you contains the answer to your question: "Using Windows Diskpart to wipe hard drive is a nice way. But it is more suitable for those people who know computer a lot. If you do not know much about command line, you may meet a damage because the operations on Diskpart is irrevocable. If you need a more securely way to wipe hard drive, you can find a third party software to do it."

[mikodo]

Thank you for the assertion of 'Windows Diskpart' brown1918. Once I'm at a command prompt, I should be able to follow the link's commands.

[mikodo]

Hello.

I decided to use Rufus to install Xubuntu 18.04 to a cheap thumb drive I bought today and was going to use it to overwrite the HD with zeros. A family member just told me that some files are still needed. Twas close, as I had the thumb drive ready with Xubuntu to begin. hmm. Luck I guess.

Well, I have a thumb drive with Xubuntu on it. Maybe I'll have use for it somewhere.

Thank you.