Windows 7: Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

The green information box at the top of the tutorial can give you more details on this to help better understand.

Hello, and thank you for a very useful and comprehensible tutorial!

I have recently installed a new SSD and now have it up and running with Windows 7. I am now planning to reinstall the old HDD in a secondary slot on my laptop to keep for storage.



This is probably an ignorant question, but am I required to perform the "clean" or "clean all" on the HDD (which has Windows 7 installed) from a command prompt at boot, when I'm booting from the SSD?

I am not sure if I completely understood the difference between "clean" and "clean all". The drive is only about 6 months old, but I just want to wipe it and make a partition for bulk files that won't fit on the SSD. Will a "clean" be sufficient or would "clean all" be a better alternative? The required time isn't really an issue.

Warm regards.

Hello Oysarl,

You will be able to run either of them from within the SSD Windows 7 on the HDD. No need to do it at boot.

A "Clean" command deletes (marks as deleted) all partitions and files on a HDD and leaves the HDD as "unallocated space" when finished. It doesn't take long to finish.

A "Clean All" command does the same thing as "Clean", but will secure erase all partitions and files on the HDD to make sure that they are permanently deleted instead of just marking them as deleted as the "Clean" does. A "Clean All" can take a long time to finish running.

For what you described, I would recommend running the "Clean" command. "Clean All" is usually for when you are selling or giving the HDD to another person, and/or you wanted to make sure that nothing can be recovered from the HDD.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thank you, Brink. That is exactly what I needed to know.

You're most welcome Oysarl.

Hiyya Shawn hav been doing this for sometime now and up to now have not had anything but minor problems but just the last two drives I am trying "make new" have come back as "Bad disk" with that black line.

Mate am I doing something wrong or is the machine telling me it is a dud disk please?

Mt next step was to follow Wolfgangs tut on SSD's before using it even if it is an HDD should I be doing that on HDD's or is that really not necessary?

John

Hey John,

That doesn't sound good for the HDDs. You might try running Seagate SeaTools on them to test to see if they may be bad (dead/dying) or not.

For in Windows 7: How to use SeaTools for Windows

For in DOS at Boot: Seatools for DOS tutorial

Good luck. I hope they are not bad.

Thanks Shawn for quick reply I'll run that over them as I have dudded two now and on my third which I want to install Ubuntu as the XP disks (old) just will not work, and it's only for the kids of a friend to stop them wrecking (again) her laptop.

John

Each time I try to open an Elevated Command Prompt from Accessories/Command and run as administrator, typing Diskpart no disc info.appears. I am running Windows 7 Version.6.1.7601. Any ideas?
Thanks
Ton

Hello.


Have a look at the tutorial linked below to make sure you are getting into the command window the right way, then ...

DISKPART : At PC Startup


diskpart <enter>

list disk

select disk # = your disk number