Use an external hard drive or USB flash drive.
The first and most crucial step in the process occurs before any data is destroyed: the backup. Hard drives are finite, and once data is overwritten, it is notoriously difficult—and often expensive—to recover. Therefore, users must identify what they need to keep. Important documents, family photos, and application keys should be copied to an external hard drive, a USB flash drive, or a cloud storage service like Google Drive or OneDrive. Once the wiping process begins, there is no turning back, making the backup the most important safety measure of the entire operation. how to clear a laptop hard drive