How do I wipe my hard drive to do a fresh windows install?

[Mattsoup]

The title says it all

[Guest]

During windows installation there is a choice to wipe drive.

[Enderman]

You start the installation, when you get to this screen

click everything and hit "delete" until only "unallocated space" is left (you cant delete that).

Then you select "unallocated space" and press next.

[Cla55ifi3xd]

Fair warning if  you have an external drive don't delete that partition. 

[Guest acdcman200]

To wipe the drive and all partitions during installation hit shift and f10. This will open an elevated command prompt

 

Type the following

 

diskpart (wait for it to load diskpart)

 

list disk (Take note of the output)

 

select disk x (pay attention to the output from list disk, replace x with the drive number you wish to wipe and install Windows to)

 

clean

 

exit

 

exit

 

Refresh your drive list then continue the install.

[Ingrid_W]

Do as @enderman said, or use third party software to format it under Windows PE mode if you don't have installation disc around.

[Enderman]

On 10/11/2016 at 11:11 AM, Cla55ifi3xd said:

Fair warning if  you have an external drive don't delete that partition. 

No other drives, internal or external, should be connected while installing windows.

Only the OS drive.

SO then there is 0 risk of deleting anything anyway.

 

4 minutes ago, Ingrid_W said:

Do as @enderman said, or use third party software to format it under Windows PE mode if you don't have installation disc around.

He said he's clean installing windows, and that step is part of the installation.

That means he needs a windows disk or USB drive to install windows in the first place.

So he doesn't need to format the drive beforehand, he can just begin the installation and do it at the screen I showed.

[Russy]

Like the other members have said, it can be done during the Windows Installation. Select the Primary Drive, go to advanced then delete. There's no need to create a new partition, the installer will handle that for you.

 

Leave the system reserved there as it is your inbuilt system recovery

it should look something like this when finished:
 

Drive 0 Partition 1: System Reserved

Drive 0 Partition 2: Unallocated

 

If you are not using a branded PC which comes with an inbuilt system recovery, go ahead and delete the System Reserved and install the OS onto the single partition which is left behind, would say:

Drive 0 Partition 1: Unallocated

 

Let me know if you've got any issues/questions - cheers!

 

PS: Download your NIC/LAN Drivers and save them on a USB or email them to yourself before you begin the installation just to make life easier.