Technology

Easy Ways To Wipe External Hard Drive On A Mac

Wipe External Hard Drive On A Mac

On a Windows-based computer, it is very easy to format or remove an external hard drive by choosing the format option from any web browser. But if you are using a Mac computer, then you have to do it by using the disk utility software. Users often want to permanently wipe an external hard drive on Mac to avoid some cybercrime-related activities. Due to the advancement of technology, cybercriminals can quickly recover and steal your deleted private data from the formatted hard drive by using the data recovery software. In that case, you may have to destroy or wipe external hard drive to avoid data leakage.

The normal deletion or format operation cannot destroy the data completely. You can restore the formatted data as it is in the hidden format.  This article will give you some relevant information and also guide you to wipe the hard drive permanently from your device. Sometimes, you will face major problems while destroying and overwriting the disk space on your own.

In this article, we will provide you with three different methods because that might help you to remove an external drive on a Mac safely.

Method 1: Use the Stellar Drive Wipe

Stellar Wipe is a powerful application, mainly designed to securely erase the entire drive. This method is much easier than the other two methods. Make sure you already have a back up of all your important documents and necessary data files before you proceed.

Wipe External Hard Drive On A Mac

Follow the steps below to wipe an external drive successfully:

  • Firstly, open the software and select the “Drive Wipe” option
  • Go to drive and choose any wiping algorithm
  • Now you can start the erasing process

Method 2: Remove the Disk Utility

For this method, you have to connect your external hard drive to your Mac computer. Before you proceed, make necessary changes so that your device can easily detect the machine. Try out the steps carefully.

  • Go to applications and select the Disk Utility option
  • Choose any file system to format your external drive
  • Click on the “security options” and try to wipe the external hard drive

Follow a set of on-screen instructions to complete all the steps successfully. In this connection. you need to remember that you cannot click on the security options if you have a solid-state drive.

Removing a disk utility is a little bit complicated task. If you are unable to proceed, you can try out another useful method.

Method 3: Format in Terminal

Sometimes disk utility fails to format your drive because of several reasons. In that case, you can try to use Terminal though it is not an easy task for us. Go through the steps mentioned below:

  • Go to the spotlight to open a terminal
  • Next, choose any disk through the disk identifier and press enter
  • Follow some on-screen directions to remove the external drive completely

You can quickly wipe the external hard drive or flash card if you can perform any of the three methods successfully. If you have any other queries, feel free to leave your comment in our comment section.