secure erase

[vikas-dhanda]

I wanted to secure erase my harddisk but there is no option showing of secure erase in BIOS > security. please help me whats wrong with my laptop HP Pavilion - 15-cc166tx. many of options shown on videos related to HP laptops are not available on my laptop. once my laptop OS got some issue and I couldn't reinstall the OS so I gave it to repair shop. after that I am not finding many of the options in my laptop. please help me out what to do?

[WAWood]

Two things ...

First, you will have to boot from something outside of Windows to do a secure erase, and since that is not done from the BIOS, you will have to use an app that allows you to create a boot USB stick and run from that.  MiniTool Partition Wizard used to have that tool, but I have not used it in a long time.

Second, if all you want to do is reinstall Windows, there is no need to do a secure erase because the installer allows you to reformat the drive at the start of the process.

If your PC is a 2016 model or newer, you should see if you can make a bootable USB recovery drive using the HP cloud recovery tool on a working PC.

The recovery drive can then be used to install Windows and the HP drivers and utilities that originally came with your PC.

You will need a working PC and a 32GB USB stick to hold the recovery files. Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmtXOU40vxk

You use the Microsoft Store to download the actual tool:

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mtks9pr7r3n?rtc=1&hl=en-us&gl=us

If you use a different PC to run the tool, you will have to provide your PC's product number. Here is an HP link for finding that information:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_2039298-1862169-16

Here's a video from HP Support about using the Cloud Recovery Tool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7AwuKNJKS4