Erase hard drive before clean reinstallation

[richlust]

Hi all i was wondering if anyone has any programs they could recommend to use to wipe a hard drive clean before reinstalling windows 7, I noticed you have this CCleaner 3 link on here CCleaner - Download.com If i put that on a disk and started it up as i would to reinstall can that wipe the disk clean?

rich

 

[wanchoo]

You first delete the partition and then recreate it on the unallocated space resulting due to the deletion.

The hard drive gets erased the fastest due to this action.

 

[richlust]

Ok wanchoo thanks you dont recommend the use of any hard drive cleaner to thouroughly clean a hard drive if you have a virus either?

 

[wanchoo]

As far as my understanding goes, deleting and recreating a partition shall delete everything including lurking viruses, if any. Hence there is no need to run any hard drive cleaner at all. This should however not be confused with File Wipe that is often performed for security reasons and when you have some secrets to hide.

Using a hard drive cleaner before clean installing Windows shall be just waste of time for most ordinary mortals.

Ok wanchoo thanks you dont recommend the use of any hard drive cleaner to thouroughly clean a hard drive if you have a virus either?

 

[richlust]

Nice thank you wanchoo for your time and knowledge

 

[wanchoo]

You are most welcome Rich.

Amarnath

 

[theog]

How to clean a HD drive before reinstall:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91339-ssd-hdd-optimize-windows-reinstallation.html

 

[gregrocker]

There is no such thing as erasing a HD. The new data being written after install has no cognizance of whether it is overwriting 1's or 0's or all 0's.

Zeroing a HD with Diskpart Clean ALL Command is only necessary to make data unrecoverable by most methods, hence only a privacy measure.

In rare cases due to install failure, or even rarer cases where HD will not boot, due to corrupt boot sector code, then zeroing out that code can be done quickly using Diskpart Clean Command. This is the only conceivable preparation a HD could need for (re)install other than deleting all partitions and creating new during install.

It took ten years for this to fully get through to me, so hopefully this will help others.

 

[whs]

It is a bit different for SSDs. There you want to do a '. secure erase'. E.g. like this http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20115106-285/how-to-securely-erase-an-ssd-drive/ The secure erase cleans up your Nands and improves the write performance.

 

[AddRAM]

As far as my understanding goes, deleting and recreating a partition shall delete everything including lurking viruses, if any. Hence there is no need to run any hard drive cleaner at all. This should however not be confused with File Wipe that is often performed for security reasons and when you have some secrets to hide.

Using a hard drive cleaner before clean installing Windows shall be just waste of time for most ordinary mortals.

Uggggggg ! You can`t have a program installed to clean a hard drive if you don`t have windows installed.