
Ask HN: Does the windows format command securely wipe a drive? - vanilla-almond
I have an external hard drive (not an SSD) that I want to wipe. Windows 10 has a format command with the option to specify the number of passes over the hard drive. If I set the number of passes to 3, will that result in a secure wipe of the drive? I don&#x27;t want to physically destroy the drive, so am looking for a software-only solution for securely wiping the  drive.
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sevarg
[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/sysinternals/downloads/sdel...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete)

