Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

How to "Clean" or "Clean All" a Disk with the Diskpart Command​

   Information

This will show you how to use the clean or clean all command on a selected disk to delete all of it's MBR or GPT partitions, volumes, and any hidden sector information on MBR disks is overwritten.

The data on the HDD is not written over using the clean command like it does with the clean all command below. With the clean command, the data on the HDD is only marked as being deleted instead and is only written over when new data is written/saved to the same location on the HDD next.

OR

You could use the clean all command (secure erase) to do the above and also have each and every disk sector on the HDD written over and zeroed out completely to securely delete all data on the disk to help prevent the data from being able to be recovered. "Clean All" takes about an hour per 320 GB to finish running.

   Note

• You cannot use the clean or clean all diskpart commands on a boot disk (ex: disk Windows is installed on) unless you do it from a command prompt at boot.

• Be sure to backup anything that you do not want to lose on the disk that you use clean or clean all on first. It will be to late afterwards. All data will be permanently lost on the disk.

   Warning

You do not want to use clean all on a SSD disk often. Having every sector written over to 0 on a SSD can reduce it's life span faster.

Here's How:

1. In Windows 7, open an elevated command prompt, or a command prompt at boot.

OR

2. In Windows 8 and 8.1, open an elevated command prompt, or a command prompt at boot.

   Note

Be sure that you have the correct Disk #. You would not want to wipe clean the wrong disk.

A) Press the Windows + R keys to open the Run dialog, type compmgmt.msc, and press Enter.

B) If prompted by UAC, click/tap on Yes.

C) Click/tap on Disk Management in the left pane, and make note of the disk # in the middle pane of the disk that you want to clean or clean all. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: For example, I would use Disk 1 if I wanted to use clean or clean all on my USB key drive.

3. In the elevated command prompt, type diskpart and press Enter. (see screenshot below)

4. In the elevated command prompt, type list disk and press Enter. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: This will give you a list of disk numbers to select from.

5. In the elevated command prompt, type select disk # and press Enter. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: You would substitute # for the disk number listed that you want to use clean or clean all on. For example, I want to use one of them on Disk 1 (from step 1) for my USB key drive, so I would type select disk 1 and press Enter.

6. If the status of the selected disk # (ex: Disk 3) shows as Offline, type online disk, and press Enter to make it online. (see screenshot below)

7. Do either step 8 or 9 below for which command you would like to use.


8. To Use the Clean Diskpart Command
NOTE: (Recommended) See the green INFO box at the top of the tutorial for more information about this command. This command will wipe the HDD quickly.
A) In the elevated command prompt, type clean, press Enter, and go to step 10 below. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: This will not take long to finish. Think of it as being like a quick format.

9. To Use the Clean All Diskpart Command
NOTE: See the green INFO box at the top of the tutorial for more information about this command. This command will wipe the HDD, and perform a secure erase. "Clean All" takes about an hour per 320 GB to finish running. It's best to only use this command if you wanted to help make sure that the data on the HDD cannot be recovered say when giving or selling the HDD to another person.
A) In the elevated command prompt, type clean all, and press Enter, and go to step 10 below. You will see the command prompt below as is until the "clean all" command is finished. (see screenshot below)

NOTE: This will take quite some time (several hours or more) to finish depending on how large the disk is since it is writing over each and every sector on it to zero. Think of it as being like a full or low level format.

10. When finished, in the elevated command prompt, type exit and press Enter. Close the elevated command prompt.

11. The disk will be left as unallocated space. (see screenshot below)

12. You will now need to create a new partition or volume on the disk to be able to use it again.



That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Shrink a Partition or Volume in Windows 7
• How to Create a New Partition or Volume in Windows 7
• How to Extend a Partition or Volume in Windows 7
• How to Delete a Partition or Volume in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Convert a FAT or FAT32 Volume to NTFS in Windows 7
• How to Convert a MBR Disk to a GPT Disk
• How to Convert a GPT Disk to a MBR Disk
• How to Convert a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk
• How to Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk
• How to Quick Format a HDD or USB Drive
• How to Securely Wipe a Hard Disk with "Darik's Boot and Nuke"
• How to Overwrite Deleted Data using the "Cipher" Command in Windows

 

[ICIT2LOL]

As Brink says mate and it depends on the machine too I found my laptop with dual cores a lot slower than the quad cores of the desktops. That is not to mention what clock speed they run at too.

 

[Scoop]

Shawn,

My Win 7 HDD contains the automatic Windows 7 install with 2 partitions, System Reserved and a "C" partition.

After reading the thread (great stuff ), I have a couple of questions about the "clean" and "clean all" commands:

- Does the "clean" command accomplish the same thing as deleting both partitions from the Disk Management Console, with the addition of deleting the MBR when using the "clean" command? I'm guessing that partition-deletes from the Console won't delete the MBR since it's located prior to the beginning of the first partition, the System Reserved partition.

- Does the "clean all" command unhide and overwrite any "Host Protected Area" sectors, more known as the HPA? Those are typically located after the last user partition on a HDD, for those HDD's the contain a HPA.

After reading some articles about HPA's, it would appear that one would need to "unhide" the HPA before most disk-wipe tools can access that area to overwrite any data located within the HPA.

Seatools (Dos) and "HDDErase" will unhide the HPA but "DBAN" doesn't access that area according to the DBAN's site FAQ section.

I think there is a Linux command that will unhide the HPA but I don't recall that command at present.

 

[Brink]

Hey Scoop,

"Clean" and "Clean all" both will completely wipe the hard drive of all partitions hidden or not.

The only difference between them is that "Clean all" includes a 1 pass override secure erase, and "Clean" doesn't.

 

[Scoop]

Hey Scoop,

"Clean" and "Clean all" both will completely wipe the hard drive of all partitions hidden or not.

The only difference between them is that "Clean all" includes a 1 pass override secure erase, and "Clean" doesn't.

10-4, thanks . You just saved me a couple of steps during my periodic "pre-cloning" routine .

 

[Brink]

You're welcome. Yeah, unless you just need to do a secure erase, I would use "clean" to save time.

 

[Scoop]

You're welcome. Yeah, unless you just need to do a secure erase, I would use "clean" to save time.

Yes. I usually do a "pre-cloning" delete of partitions, only to make it easier for me to identify the Target HDD within cloning software since it will appear as unallocated. This command saves me some "clicks" and steps

 

[Mac The Steve]

Clean all, clean, etc doesn't work. Prompt says Clean not allowed.

Thank you Shawn - I followed the excellent directions but get the following errors (snip below)

"Virtual Disk Service Error: Clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot, system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume." note that I am not trying to format the OS drive, just a HDD that was originally in a raid configuration with another identical drive that I formatted & accidentally made Virtual. Now I just want to get it back to mirroring it's twin again. Can anyone help?

Thank you!

 

[Brink]

Hello Mac, and welcome to Seven Forums.

See if running the "clean" command at boot instead may allow you to do so.

 

[tinhdx]

I'm use to clean command when install window. Pls help me recover data. Thank all very much (

 

[Brink]

Hello tinhdx, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Unfortunately, there is no recovery when you use the clean command to wipe a hard drive unless you have a backup or system image saved at another location.

 

[Layback Bear]

If I may. From the tutorial.

Be sure to backup anything that you do not want to lose on the disk that you use clean or clean all on first. It will be to late afterwards. All data will be permanently lost on the disk.

 

[tinhdx]

Yes, thanks a lot Brink

 

[Scoop]

Shawn,

I recently had an encounter with the "disk signature" conflict when I was preparing my Laptop PC for a routine clone process.

What happened, was I connected up my Target HDD via a SATA/USB Enclosure to delete the partitions before cloning. When I connected the Target HDD (which was a near-mirror copy since it had been cloned a few weeks earlier), I saw the "disk signature conflict" message in the Disk Management Snap-in console on the left-hand side.

It wasn't unexpected but I rarely see that message appear when attaching my Target HDD's prior to cloning.

When I encountered that "signature conflict" issue, I booted up in "Gparted" and deleted the partitions that way, thinking that I couldn't use the "clean" command without bringing the HDD online first.


My question about the "clean" command is,

- Is it necessary to bring the HDD online before using the Clean command?

Or can I just use the "select disk x" to bring it to focus, then use the "clean" command without bringing the HDD online?

 

[Brink]

Hey Scoop,

Yeah, if the disk is offline, you'll get the error below when trying to run "clean" or "clean all".

DISKPART> clean

Virtual Disk Service error:
The operation is not allowed on a disk that is offline.

 

[Scoop]

Shawn,

Thanks for the info. It's what I guessed would happen. No problem, since that conflict appears (for me) to be rare, I can always use Gparted to access the disk outside of Windows.

 

[Brink]

True dat.

 

[M4Imo]

Hello all.

I own a hdd which was before in laptop that is not functioning, but hdd was intact and working good (500gb hitachi sata II), so i am planning to use it as external hdd, for both pc and ps3. It was partitioned in a way that had primary partition of 450gb and recovery partition of 15gb, and also a small system reserved so i used clean all, because i googled that is the easiest way to merge and in same time format the two partitions. The clean all command is still working (3.5 hours for now), but in the disk managment, hdd im doing clean on, it already says unallocated, also it is offline now, and whenever im entering disk managment it asks me shall i do initialization? I should guess it's better to wait with it till it's over.

My questions are now, if i cancel the procedure now, would there be any damage, and what steps i should do after, use only clean, or start making partition and format?

When i start making partitions, i suppose first is initialization, do i go for MBR, or GPT (this hdd will most likely be storage one)? After that when allocating partitions on it, i would like to make one partition NTFS, and one FAT32, both same in size. From the guides i've seen i must type what size of partition i wan't so im interested what number i must type in the correct box, 250gb or it must be in some different unit size? And after the clean all procedure, if i wait till it's really over, will i have on command full 500gb, or will it be little smaller? For now, unallocated size says 465,76gb.

Thanks for any help

 

[Brink]

Hello M4Imo, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If you cancel the "Clean all", then you'll just need to start over, but I would use the "clean" command instead to finish faster. Just don't do a hard restart of the computer to stop it.

Afterwards, I'd go with using MBR when creating a new primary partition.

1024 MB = 1 GB, so you would type 256000 for 250 GB when you shrink the fist partition to create the other partition with.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2672-partition-volume-shrink.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

You can indeed have one partition NTFS, and the other FAT32.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[M4Imo]

Hey and thanks.

I will probably do the cancel then. If i've understood good, i can do it with CTRL and c.

Also when i will start with making the partitions, should i set it to be basic, or dynamic?

For now like i have mentioned before, it says i have 465,76 gb available, not 500. Is the 35 gb reserved for something else? If it stays that after just the clean, i will just do 50-50 then.

Just for the convinience, should i do firts partition with NTFS, and then the second FAT32? Or is it just the same?

And i suppose i can even skip the shrinking since all my hdd will be unalllacoted so i can just start partitioning.

Thanks

 

[Brink]

That would be correct to cancel, but it may take time for it to cancel though.

You would want to have a basic disk.

You can use any size you like for the partitions. That was just an example. Multiply 1024 by how many GBs you want the partition to be for what to type in.

I'm not familiar if the PS3 requires the FAT32 partition to first or second, but use whatever is required for it.

Once you create the first primary partition, you'll need to shrink it by how much you want to use for the second partition to then have that as unallocated space to create the second partition with.