Product Guide
Disk Wiper Pro
Permanently erases everything on a drive so that nothing can be recovered — the right way to prepare a computer for sale, donation or recycling.
This cannot be undone. There is no recovery.
Disk Wiper Pro does exactly what it says. Once a wipe finishes, the data is gone permanently — no professional service, no software, no amount of money will get it back. That's the entire point of the product, and it's why it works.
Copy anything you want to keep onto another drive or into cloud storage first. Photos, documents, tax records, browser bookmarks, licence keys, saved games. Once you start, that window closes.
Your pre-flight checklist
- Everything important is backed up — and you've opened the backup to confirm the files are really there.
- You've signed out of your accounts. Deactivate Microsoft Office, Adobe or similar licences while you still can. Sign out of iTunes and any other software that limits how many devices you use.
- You've unplugged every other drive. External hard drives, USB sticks, memory cards, second internal drives — disconnect anything you're not wiping. This is the mistake that hurts most.
- The laptop is plugged into mains power. A wipe can run for hours. If it loses power partway, you'll need to start over.
- You know which disk you're wiping and how big it is, so you can identify it on screen.
Selling the computer? Wipe it, don't just delete files
Emptying the Recycle Bin, formatting, or using Windows' “Reset this PC” leaves your data physically on the disk where readily available recovery software can pull it back. Overwriting every sector — which is what this drive does — is the only reliable way.
Using Disk Wiper Pro
Haven't started your computer from the drive yet? Do that first — the five steps are here. Everything below happens after the Repairo desktop appears.
-
Choose what to wipe
Section 1. Wipe target, top-left:
Wipe target options and when to use each Option When to choose it Entire drive or disk You're selling, donating or scrapping the computer. Erases everything, Windows included. This is the usual choice. Free space only You're keeping the computer and using it normally. Destroys previously deleted files while leaving Windows and your current files alone. Recycle bin You just want the deleted items in the Recycle Bin destroyed properly. Not sure? If the computer is leaving your hands, choose Entire drive or disk.
-
Choose the security method — and don't overdo it
Section 2. Security, top-middle. This is where people accidentally cost themselves days.
Our recommendation for nearly everyone: Fill with zero
One pass. On any drive made in the last twenty years, a single complete overwrite makes the old data unrecoverable — including by laboratory methods. The multi-pass options exist for historic government standards written for 1990s magnetic media. They take many times longer and add nothing you'd notice.
Avoid Peter Gutmann's 35-pass unless you have a week
It writes over the entire disk 35 separate times. On a 1 TB hard drive that's roughly three to five days of continuous running. It is not frozen — it's doing exactly what you asked. Every “it's been stuck for two days” message we receive is this setting.
Rough wipe duration by method for a 1 TB drive Method Passes Rough time, 1 TB hard drive Fill with zero — recommended 1 2–4 hours Fill with pseudo-random 1 2–4 hours Fill with zero and one 2 4–8 hours DoD 5220.22-M 3 6–12 hours DoD 5220.28-STD 7 14–28 hours Peter Gutmann 35 3–5 days SSDs are considerably faster than the figures above — often under an hour for a single pass. Old drives and USB-connected drives are slower. These are estimates, not promises.
-
Pick the correct disk — slowly and carefully
Section 3 lists every disk connected to the computer. Click the one you want to erase.
Never select the disk labelled “Wiper Pro”
That entry is the Repairo USB drive you're currently running from. Wiping it destroys the product and stops the wipe mid-run. It's usually small — a few hundred megabytes — and shows a name like Y: Wiper Pro. Leave it alone.
How to be certain you've got the right one:
- Go by size. Your computer's main drive is the big one — typically 238 GB, 465 GB, 931 GB or larger. Those are how 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB drives actually report themselves.
- Look for the C: partition. The disk containing C: is the one Windows lives on.
- Skip anything called RAMDisk. That's temporary memory the Repairo drive uses while running, not a real disk.
- Skip small disks. Anything under about 64 GB is likely the Repairo drive or another USB stick.
If two disks look plausible and you can't tell them apart, stop and send us a photo of the screen. We'll tell you which one. There is no undo, so a five-minute wait is worth it.
-
Click Wipe Now and leave it be
The button is on the right-hand side. You'll be asked to confirm — this is your last chance to change your mind.
- A progress bar appears. On a large drive it can sit at one percentage for a long time. That's normal.
- Don't turn the computer off, close the lid, or unplug anything.
- Check your power settings if the machine tends to sleep on its own; a laptop lid left open avoids most of this.
- It's perfectly fine to walk away and leave it running overnight.
Wiping a 1 TB drive properly takes hours. Set it going in the evening and check it in the morning.
-
When it finishes, shut down and remove the drive
Use the Shutdown PC icon in the top-left corner of the Repairo desktop, then pull the USB drive out once the computer is fully off.
The computer will no longer start. That is correct.
After wiping the entire drive you'll see “No bootable device”, “Operating system not found” or similar. Nothing has gone wrong — you deliberately erased Windows. That message is proof the wipe worked. What to do next ↓
What happens after the wipe
Selling, donating or recycling it
You're done. Hand it over as it is. The buyer installs their own operating system, and a blank drive is exactly what a careful buyer wants to see.
Mention that the drive has been securely wiped — it's a selling point, not a defect.
Keeping it and starting fresh
You'll need to reinstall Windows. Two free routes:
- Microsoft's official Windows download page, using another computer to make an install drive.
- Our 4-in-1 Computer Repair Toolkit, which includes Windows installation media.
Your Windows licence is stored in the computer's hardware and survives a wipe — it usually reactivates automatically.
If something doesn't go to plan
It's been running for hours and the progress bar has barely moved
Almost always normal. Check which method you selected — each pass rewrites the entire disk, so a 7-pass wipe genuinely takes seven times as long as one pass.
Reasons a wipe runs slowly:
- A multi-pass method (DoD or Gutmann) was chosen
- The drive is large — 2 TB and up takes a very long time
- It's an older mechanical hard drive rather than an SSD
- The drive is connected over USB rather than internally
- The drive is failing, which makes every write slow
Want it finished sooner? Shut down, start again, and choose Fill with zero. Restarting a wipe is harmless.
It stopped with an error, or reported bad sectors
This points at the drive itself, not the software. A drive with failing sectors can't be written to reliably.
- Try again — sometimes a second run gets further.
- Try a single-pass Fill with zero, which is gentlest.
- Wipe the individual partitions rather than the whole disk.
If the drive is genuinely dying and holds sensitive data, the certain answer is physical destruction. Remove it and drill through it, or use a shredding service. Many electronics recyclers do this free.
My drive isn't listed at all
- Click Reload at the top-left of the window.
- External drive? Make sure it's plugged in and, if it needs one, has its power adapter connected.
- In the BIOS, switch the storage mode from RAID or Intel RST to AHCI — some laptops hide the drive otherwise.
- A drive that has physically failed won't appear. If the computer had already stopped recognising it, that's the explanation.
Some very new laptops use storage that needs a manufacturer-specific driver. Get in touch with the model and we'll advise.
I wiped the wrong disk. Can I get the data back?
Unplug the drive immediately
Stop the wipe and disconnect the drive right now. Every extra second overwrites more.
Being straight with you: anything already overwritten is gone for good. No service can recover it. That's what secure wiping means.
If you stopped it early, a professional data recovery service may retrieve parts of the drive that weren't reached yet. Don't write anything else to it, and don't run recovery software on the drive itself.
Is a single pass really enough to protect my data?
Yes. For any drive manufactured this century, one complete overwrite is accepted as unrecoverable — including by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, whose media sanitisation guidance treats a single overwrite pass as sufficient for modern drives.
The multi-pass methods date from an era of much lower-density magnetic media. They're offered here because some organisations' policies still require them by name — not because your data needs it.
Unsure about anything? Ask before you click.
Wiping is permanent, so we'd far rather answer a question first. Send us a photo of the screen and we'll confirm which disk is which. How to reach us →