Does Windows 10 completely wipe the partition table?

[Yasashii]

Hi.

 

When I install Linux there is usually an option, depending on the distro, to "create new partition table",  during the partitioning process. There is no such option while installing Windows.

 

The question is: if I delete all partitions on a given partition table before installing Windows, does the installer create a new partition table or does it use the existing one?

 

The context is, if I should be so unlucky as to get infected with a virus which stores itself in the MBR space of a disk, does removing all of the partitions and creating them anew during installation completely fix that issue if I'm using an MBR partition table or does this still leave a possibility that the virus could survive the re-installation of the system itself?

 

Let's assume my anti-malware software did not detect the virus prior to re-installation of the operating system.

[Master Disaster]

If you delete all existing partitions then a new table has to be created yes but remember, there's a few other variables at play here.

 

First is partition type/style, this is either MBR or GPT.

Next is the partition table, this is the list of each partition on the disk.

Finally is Filesystem, NTFS, FAT, EXT4 etc.

 

As you can see, even removing the partition table might not necessarily clear the MBR (though this is not an issue with GPT since boot data is stored on a partition anyway).

 

If you're ever in doubt, at the partition screen just press Shift + F10 to open command prompt then use diskpart to clean the drive, diskpart cleaning reverts the disk back to RAW.

 

The reason Windows installation doesn't have the advanced partitioning & FS tools that Linux has is simple, it doesn't need them. Windows 10 can only boot from an NTFS filesystem anyway so that's the only FS it supports, advanced users can use diskpart for anything else.