Securely Wipe a Drive Before Installing Windows – DiskPart vs. Partition Delete

0:05 Hi, in this video we're going to be talking about deleting partitions versus using the dispart clean command when it comes to wiping your drive before reinstalling Windows. So depending on your goals, uh you could use one or the other to technically, you know, clean your computer before reinstalling Windows. So, it's all going to depend on if you're just trying to simply remove the data or if you think you might have had some kind of virus or malware issue. All right, so we're going to talk about these real quick and then we're going to try them both out and show you how they work. All right, so deleting partitions during the Windows installation. So, what that will do is just remove the partition table entries and recreate a new partitions. So, it overwrites the file system metadata and boot files for the operating system, Windows.

0:50 So this removes most malware stored in system partitions but will not wipe unallocated space or hidden sectors like the master boot record or GPT headers. So for the most case, you know, malware is not going to be, you know, hidden in the master boot record and that type of thing unless it's some type of advanced virus. All right. So the benefits of this is quick and easy during installation. It preserves the drive health by performing only minimal amount of rights and is sufficient for most cases. All right. So if you want to use the dispart clean command and there's also a clean all command. So this removes partition and volume information leaving the disk unallocated. Clean all will write zeros to every sector which wipes all data including hidden areas and boot sectors. So its impact on

1:37 malware. It eliminates any chance of boot kits or root kits surviving and ensures no remnants and unallocated space. So, the benefits of this is maximum security and privacy and it's ideal for repurposing drives or when you suspect advanced threats and it can comply with secure wipe standards for sensitive data. All right, so now I'm going to boot to a Windows installation drive here and then we'll show you the part on how you could delete the partitions. Then we'll do it again and we'll do the dis part method. So here is our drive here. So this has two discs on it. So, our C drive with our partitions for Windows and then we have our standalone data drive here. So, obviously if you have two drives, you're going to need to make sure uh you are working with the correct one. So, one

2:22 easy way is to make a note of the disc number, dis 0 one, and also the size. So, we're working with this 80 gig drive, not the 100 gig drive. All right, so let's shut down and reboot with the Windows installation disc. Okay, so we're at the first screen for the Windows 11 setup wizard. So, we'll just click on next here. So, we're going to choose the option to install Windows 11. And of course, you have to agree that everything's going to be wiped, but we're wiping the drive anyway, so it doesn't matter. Pick your version.

3:08 accept the agreement. All right. So, here are our discs. Remember, disc zero and dis one. So, we're working with disk zero. So, here are all of our partitions. So, what you would want to do is delete each one of these here for dis zero. All right. Okay, so now we have unallocated space for the whole 80 gigs. And of course, you could create your own partitions if you want to split it up for some reason. But then you just click on next once you have everything configured and then just click on install. Okay, so that's how you delete the partitions the

3:53 normal way before installing Windows. So now we're going to go back and use the dispart command. All right, so we're booting up again with our Windows installation media. All right. So now we have this link here for previous version of setup and then we can click on next here and then repair your computer. All right. So now we're going to go to troubleshoot and then command prompt. Now we're going to type in disk part all one word. That brings us to the disk part prompt

4:40 here. Now we'll do list disk and this shows us our disc. So remember the 80 gig disc is the one we're working with here. So we will select that disc by typing select dis zero. So now disc zero is the one we're working with. So now we could either do clean or clean all. So let's do clean all which is the more secure method. All right. So using the clean all will take quite a bit of time and that time will depend on how large your disc is and how fast it is. So just using clean by itself is pretty instant. But this takes a few minutes or so. So I will pause the video and then be back when

5:26 it's done. All right. So the process is complete. So now we can type an exit. Close the command prompt here. And now what you'll have to do is turn off your computer and then restart it again with the Windows installation beta. So let's do that and check out the drive. All right. Booting up again. Let's go through that wizard real quick here.

6:21 All right. So now you can see we don't have to come here and delete all the partitions because the dispart clean command did that for us. So now we could just go ahead and click on next and go ahead and install Windows. All right. So those are your two options for wiping your drive uh before installing Windows 11. Of course, there are other, you know, options like thirdparty tools you could use to uh securely wipe drive as well, but this is the easiest way to do it without having to, you know, download or buy anything extra. All right, thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe. [music]