Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Thanks! And there is no difference which one of the 2 we use speed-wise, right?

Hi Brink, a very useful tutorial. However, I believe that it could do with just a little more advice on the end for what to do with a portable hard drive in order to make it usable again after doing a 'clean all'.

I followed your instructions in order to wipe a portable hard drive prior to possible sale. It worked fine although it did take a while. However, I struggled to get it to be recognised again in a computer afterwards. That may be down to my lack of knowledge of partitions and volumes but I'm sure that other readers may be in the same boat. As it was a portable hard drive, I suspected that I did not want a new partition as I thought that they were only used to separate areas on a single device. The "How to Create a New Partition or Volume in Windows 7" tutorial seemed, on glimpsing through, to concentrate on creating partitions. Perhaps a few wise words on having to create a new volume (or, at least, that is what I assume has to be done) may be in order?

BorderReiver said:

As it was a portable hard drive, I suspected that I did not want a new partition as I thought that they were only used to separate areas on a single device.

A hard drive, portable or not, has to have at least one partition to be usable.

If you purchase a new hard drive, it typically will not have ANY partitions. You'd need to create at least one. It would then have to be formatted in order to accept files.

Does both Clean and Clean All rewrite the MBR section? Or just the Clean All?

I've done DOD 3 pass wipe on external HDD, and thought it would overwrite the ENTIRE disc. But looks like it doesn't touch the MBR as it doesn't ask you to set the MBR afterwards.

Whereas using the Clean or Clean will cause it to ask you to setup the MBR.

I have some spare hard drives that I put a cloned copy of the OS on. Use them to download questionable things in case they contain viruses or malware. So every so often I do a DOD 3 pass wipe to clean the drive. So I would also need to clean the MBR section as well in case a virus got in there.

Looking around I read of it being suggested to do something like a Clean or Clean All first, then do your wipe, then reformat it, then install the OS to do a clean wipe of any viruses that may be on there.

Does "Clean" write over the boot sector then rewrite the boot sector when you select "MBR"?

I'm guessing the software that lets you clean a drive, i.e. DOD 3 pass wipe don't touch the boot sector. As after doing that, it doesn't ask you to select MBR or GPT. I only got it to ask that after doing the Clean or Clean All.

So I guess what I'll do if I need to clean a drive for any viruses. Is first do a Clean and reset it to MBR. Which I guess rewrites the boot sector. Then do my DOD 3 pass wipe or single pass wipe. Then do the LONG format, then load the cloned image.

How would you recommend removing any traces of viruses from an external hard drive? Clean, then set to MBR. Then do say a full pass erase. Then install the cloned image or install from the factory disc.