Help us: How to completely erase a hard drive as if it was new?
I will soon switch to an SSD and also to Windows 10. So I will install it on my SSD and start from scratch. I of course want to keep my current hard drive and use it, just as a secondary drive. I want the OS on the SSD now, so I really want to delete everything from the old drive including the OS and start over. So what’s the best way to erase a hard drive, including the operating system, to get the most performance out of it?
Thanks in advance.
This is a user case of the tomshardware forum, in this situation the user completely wants a hard drive including OS in order to reuse it for storage. For example, you can use it to store programs, personal files, music, videos, and whatever else you want. Then the problem is how to completely erase a hard drive including OS?
If you’ve ever done a thorough research, you may know that there are many ways to delete everything on a hard drive. In this article, I will show you some of them and it is said that they are 100% working. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Method 1: Completely wipe hard drive using Diskpart Clean all commands
Erasing the hard drive for reuse is a simple reason to delete all data on the hard drive, and it can also be due to upgrading the hard drive, deleting sensitive data, sales or donations, etc. No matter what is your cause, you can try to clean the hard drive and the data on it with Diskpart Clean all commands. It applies to both system disk and data disk without any worry.
Before erasing a disc, you need to make some preparations:
- Make sure your system drive is bootable, or you will lose it.
- Connect the hard drive, including the operating system, to another hard drive slot or via a USB to SATA cable.
Then you can start deleting everything on the hard drive.
Step 1. Type cmd and select Run as administrator from the list of results.
Step 2. In the command prompt window, type diskpart and press Enter to launch this command line utility.
Step 3. Type the following commands in order, and then press Enter.
- list disc
- select disk m (m is the disk number of the hard disk including the operating system)
- clean everything
Step 4. Type exit and press Enter to exit the command prompt window.
Method 2: Erase hard drive with free hard drive eraser
Apart from Diskpart cleaning commands, you can always try AOMEI Backupper free hard drive eraser to erase disk including operating system with its disk erase function. This backup software Support 3 types of disc erase and 4 methods of disc erase.
It supports wiping partitions, unallocated space and entire disk, so you can choose any item to wipe. And more surprisingly, you can choose multiple partitions or disks at once, which frees you from tedious work to a certain extent.
Besides, it supports 4 disk wipe methods, among which, filling sectors with zeros is the only option that is available on the free version of AOMEI Backupper. So, you may be wondering if it is enough to erase hard drive including operating system? The answer is YES, please feel free to use it.
Note that all your files will be deleted from the hard drive. Please check if there are any important items that you don’t want to lose.
Step 1. Install the hard drive eraser and open it to prepare. Then go to Tools and choose Erase Disk.
Step 2. Choose the type of disk cleanup, you have two options, Erase one or more partitions or unallocated space, or Erase disk. Select Wipe Disk and click Next to continue.
Step 3. Select the hard drive including the operating system, then click Next.
Note: You can select more than one hard drive at a time if necessary.
Step 5. Choose the disk wipe method, choose Fill Sectors With Zero, and click Start. It will delete all your data on the hard drive and then replace it with a zero.
Go ahead and try
That’s all for how to erase hard drive including operating system, you can select a method from above. Diskpart clean up all working orders in most cases, but some users still say Diskpart clean up all nothing happen. If you are in such case or want an easier way, you could try AOMEI Backupper free hard drive eraser to complete this task in simple steps.
It is also free backup software that can be used to permanently protect data on hard drive or SSD. For example, you can use it to back up the operating system and all the programs and data in it, then you can restore thesystem image to recover your computer in a very short time.
