Clean wipe

[Dantastico]

Is there anyway to completely Delete everythingon a HDD and get it back to "new" with just the os on there?

[Enderman]

yeah its called formatting and reinstalling windows

aka "clean install" or "fresh install"

[DimasRMDO]

Format your HDD mate, this will delete the OS too.... But you can always reinstall the OS, to do this boot to the Windows installation media (USB or DVD) then click next until asked for upgrade or advanced settings. Click advanced and select your Windows partition and click format, it should wipe everything. Then you can reinstall your OS to your HDD again (to the partition you just formatted), then you get fresh OS, like new.

[Mindstab Thrull]

Years ago you'd look to do a "low-level format" of your hard drive, which was commonly doable through the BIOS. The updated version would be a zero-fill. Some software allows you to do a secure wipe of the hard drive. The net result in all cases is the same: your drive is filled with zeroes. Then install the OS and it's like new. (Simply reinstalling the OS, even after a format, doesn't necessarily get rid of everything; this is the cleanest way to do it in terms of actually removing the information.)

[Captain_WD]

Is there anyway to completely Delete everythingon a HDD and get it back to "new" with just the os on there?

 

 

Hey Dantastico,

 

A simple format should delete the partition table and make the HDD look line new. You can go to Disk Management, delete all partitions except the boot one, and then perform a clean install over that partition. Your other option is to delete all partition from the OS installer and then do the clean install. If you want to secure erase everything, you can plug the drive to an already existing system and perform a "writing zeros" action to make the drive completely empty.

 

Captain_WD.