Windows 10: Will a clean install securely wipe the entire hard drive?

If I want to completely and securely wipe my hard drive so that there is nothing recoverable left, will a clean win 10 install with formatting do this?

Or do I need to first use killdisk or something similar to wipe the drive, then install windows?

if I use a tool like that, will I still be able to install windows 10 by creating a bootable USB? or will my USB drivers be gone, and if so, how should I do this?

Sorry I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I tried searching for a guide on this process and all I'm getting are the basic instructions on a clean install which don't exactly answer these questions.

:)

 

Windows 10 key stored in pc firmware ?

Hi,



The answer is that Windows 10 formats the hard drive by offsetting the first partition on the hard drive and may also create a 450 MB partition.



The secret is to wipe all the formatting of the drive and leave it clean.



The way I do it is I use a product called Partition Wizard 9.0 (it is FREE) and that makes a bootable CD.



WARNING: THIS IS ONLY FOR NON BRAND NAME COMPUTERS THAT DON’T HAVE THE FACTORY RECOVERY PARTITION/S.



The steps are:

• 
  Boot from the CD and use it to wipe the entire the hard drive clean.
  
• 
  Format the hard drive as just a single partition.
  
• 
  Wipe the partition off again, leaving it as a unformatted drive.
  

Doing this will leave you with the drive ready for a clean install of the OS (Win 7; Win 8.1 or whatever).

Kind regards,

Mark

 

Nokia C6 security code

A hard reset will most definitely wipe the phone clean but it won't necessarily reset the security code for you!

 

You would need to use killdisk as I believe Windows Installer only uses quick format during installation to cut down the install time.

 

I have never done a total format like that - will I still be able to reinstall windows after that? from USB or DVD?

 

Yes. You can also use MiniTool Partition Wizard to wipe the hard drive. It has options to write 0s, 1s, 0s followed by 1s. You can even start it from within Windows, it just reboots to load itself to then wipe the same system drive it came from. It is also on Kyhi's recovery drive:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

I would make sure you can actually boot from the Windows 10 USB/DVD first and make sure it works. Go into the custom install option up to the point where it lists your disks/partitions, then exit. Then wipe the drive, then go back to Windows install.

 

I've ran both ccleaner and Active Kill Disk, and the problem persist. I can still recover the files with Recuva. There are thousands of eml files which apparently have been overwritten previously which these tools have no effect on. They are deleted, but still recoverable, and wiping free space on the disk will not help. I have no idea where they are "stuck".

This is why I'm thinking I need to totally wipe everything from the disk and start fresh if I want the traces gone, unless someone has a better idea?

 

Emails go through servers. They will still be out there somewhere for retrieval. Unless you are Hilary Clinton.

 

I know, but thats not relevant here, I'm concerned about whats on this particular machine...

 

Are you going to be keeping this computer? If so, there's no reason to worry about wiping out your data. A simple reformat of the drive would prep it.

If you are setting this up as a working computer and giving it to someone else, then I'd recommend running something like KillDisk.

 

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