Windows 7: Using Diskpart

Hello everyone.



What I would like is to do is a "secure erase" (write zeroes) to a partition of a HDD before a clean install of Windows 7. If I were to boot to a Command Prompt at Startup would the series of commands in the snip below secure erase (zero) the partition; then I could clean install Windows 7 to that same partition.

Does a full format do a secure erase to the partition? I don't really want to use a 3rd party prog. to do it if Diskpart will.

I hope y'all understand what I'm asking.

Hello Ted,

You can use the Clean All command to "secure erase" a hard drive to completely wipe it clean.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hello Brink.

Thanks for the reply.


I've been experimenting with that and a "clean" and a "clean all" command remove the partition structure from the HDD and make it "unallocated" space and I don't want that to happen, I want to do a secure erase to a partition on a HDD with data on other partitions on the HDD and not lose that data.

While the "format" command is not as a "secure erase" as using the "Clean All" command, if you "format" and install Windows on top of it, it should pretty much wipe out any traces of data that was on the HDD.


Quick Format - only rewrites the boot record of the media and makes the whole space available for writing data. Althought physically, previous data is still present, only marked as free space.

Full Format - formats everything as well as test (dskchk) each sector for Read/Write problems. Sectors with problems are marked as bad. Since it tests every sector, depending on the hard drive size and computer speed may take many minutes or hours to do.

So any data on the partition would be pretty much un-recoverable after a full format and a clean install?



Thank you Shawn.

I'm sure that the government will still have a way to recover some data from it if push came to shove, but it would be practically unrecoverable for your average joe.

If you truly need it wiped cleaned, then it's either the "Clean All" command, or a 3rd party disk scrubbing program with several passes that would need to be used to do so.

I realized after I posted that that I was making it sound as though I have "stuff" I want hidden, I don't, I just want a clean slate when I do clean installs from now on.


Thank you very much Shawn.

I also want to say "thank you" to Jonathan_King for his help with this also.

You don't have to be a criminal or a spy to want a truly clean drive

There is a little known command built into all modern drives firmware.....

CMRR - Secure Erase

This does not work on USB or SCSI drives.

It has been my understanding over the years of researching that the following refers to Bad Sectors as well..

No other software or method will also erase data on bad sectors.

So even if you erase a drive of data. Any data that was written to a sector that has
been marked bad can be recovered using exotic lab techniques for data recovery.

There are many devices now that are certified and can claim full certification for
things like HIPAA and other very sensitives data erasure needs that only use the
Internal Wipe Command to completely erase all data from a drive that could be
re-used in any capacity.
Which makes the Internal Wipe Command very favorable for anyone who is about to trash,
or resell a system that they may not want sensitive data to be recovered from.

Keep in mind that this is a full disk erasure.

Tepid:

Sounds interesting. Have you actually used this app? I have downloaded it, but gone no further.

It appears that the EXE file is actually called hdderase.exe rather than Secure Erase?

I guess you have to burn it to a bootable CDR and then boot from it.

Any issues and do you have an estimate of how long this takes to run on a 1 TB drive scheduled for disposal?

Barefoot Kid:

Here are the commands I use with Diskpart, after hitting Shift F10 during setup:

list disk (to show the ID number of the hard disk to partition, normally Disk 0)

select disk 0 (change 0 to another number if applicable)

clean

create partition primary size=80000 (create a partition with 80 GB space; to use the entire disk as one partition, omit the “size=value” parameter switch; use a similar command to create more partitions if needed or create in Windows 7 after installation)

select partition 1

active

format fs=ntfs quick

exit

Hello Ignatzatsonic,

The data on the HDD is not written over using the clean or format quick command. It is only marked as being deleted and can be written over when new data is written/saved to the HDD next. You would have to use the clean all command for a secure erase to have all the data written over with 0's on the HDD instead though.

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command