[[!meta title="Delete the persistent volume"]]

To delete the persistent volume of a Tails device, choose
<span class="menuchoice">
  <span class="guimenu">Applications</span>&nbsp;▸
  <span class="guisubmenu">Tails</span>&nbsp;▸
  <span class="guimenuitem">Delete persistent volume</span></span>, and click
  on the <span class="guilabel">Delete</span> button.

This can be useful in order to delete all the files saved to the persistent
volume in a single operation. You can later create a new persistent volume on
the same device without having to reinstall Tails.

Securely delete the persistent volume
-------------------------------------

<div class="caution">

<strong>The previous technique might not prevent an attacker from recovering the files in the
old persistent volume using [[data
recovery techniques|encryption_and_privacy/secure_deletion#why]].</strong>
To securely delete the persistent volume, start Tails from another media, and do the following
operations on the device that you want to delete securely:

<ol>
<li>[[Format the device and create a single encrypted partition|encryption_and_privacy/encrypted_volumes]]
on the whole device. This step deletes both Tails and the persistent volume.</li>
<li>[[Securely clean all the available disk
space|encryption_and_privacy/secure_deletion#clean_disk_space]] on this new encrypted
partition.</li>
<li>[[Reinstall Tails|install]] on the device.</li>
<li>Start Tails from the device and [[create a new persistent
volume|persistence/configure]].</li>
</ol>

</div>
