Solved Reformatting windows 7 Drive

I have win7 pro installed (upgrade from Vista) 64 Bit
I need to reformat (wipe the drive) After I get it wiped I will reinstall from an image backup (acronis) How do I go about wiping the drive.I Need all the info I can get. I could do it ok when back in time I had xp Vista and 7 seem to different at wiping the drive

johnm32073 said:

I have win7 pro installed (upgrade from Vista) 64 Bit
I need to reformat (wipe the drive) After I get it wiped I will reinstall from an image backup (acronis) How do I go about wiping the drive.I Need all the info I can get. I could do it ok when back in time I had xp Vista and 7 seem to different at wiping the drive

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Acronis will delete the selected partitions on your drive when you boot from the acronis boot cd to install your images. It will caution you that it will delete the existing partitions and make you answer yes or no.

Rich

You can do it from windows 7 dvd - boot it - then either use diskpart command , OR start to install, and select Drive Options (advanced ) and delete and repartition there.

That is if you were wanting a clean install or if you particularly wanted to wipe the drive with clean all command.

For restoring an image - boot the imaging app.- all will delete and recreate the partition to which you are restoring. Some have additional partitioning options as well

If you already have a 3rd party partition manager - all of them will do it - you could use that instead if you prefer.

Hello, here's a lot of useful information and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.


After you have copied out or made back-ups of the data you need to save to external media, then boot the Windows 7 installation media to use Step One of this tutorial at the first link below to do a wipe (secure erase) to the entire Hard Disk Drive / Solid State Drive.

:info: Whether you use diskpart to run either the clean all command to completely wipe a HDD / SSD or just the clean command to remove the format configuration data and don't use diskpart to create at least a single partition to do the installation to, letting the Windows installer do the format you will end up with the new Windows 7 System Reserved partition, if you want to make your own decision whether this partition is added, study these two (2) options below.

• Then if you do not want to create the new Windows 7 "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #2 to create, format and mark Active a single 100GB partition to do the installation to.
• If you do want to create the "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #3 to create, format and mark Active the System Reserved partition and then create and format the 100GB partition to do the installation to.

Either way, running the "clean all" then creating and formatting the partition(s) using diskpart will get you the best possible space to do a clean install of Windows 7 to; you can always extend the Windows partition to include the remaining unallocated space on the HDD / SSD or create additional Primary partitions or an Extended partition after the installation completes if you choose.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

DISKPART : At PC Startup

Do a Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

If you don't want to wipe the entire HDD, you can do a partition-specific wipe of the Windows partition using the Partition Wizard Bootable Disk (PWBD) have a look at Option Three in the tutorial at this link below.

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

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