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Easy way to securely erase files on Windows?

Giving away an old external drive that had tax documents and passport scans on it. From what I've read, deleting and emptying the bin isn't enough. What's a simple way to make the files unrecoverable?
delete files securely
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brittons Oct 23, 2026
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depends if it's an ssd. on an old spinning drive, overwriting works - cipher /w:C:\ from a command prompt wipes the free space so files you already deleted can't be pulled back. on an ssd overwriting single files isn't reliable because the drive shuffles data around itself, though trim usually clears deleted blocks fairly quickly anyway. if you're selling or binning the machine, don't fiddle with files at all - reset this pc, remove everything, and say yes to cleaning the drive.
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