How do i clean drives to use it again?
Posted by Corruptshark123@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 7 comments
I just bought the parts for a new gaming pc. I have an old SSD and two HDD that i want to move over to my new pc. So how do i completly wipe those drives so i dont have all kinds of junk and unnecessary stuff laying on them. So it pretty much feels like a completly new pc.
Is it possible just to plug it all in, and then when i do the windows installaation. I just click delete all partitions on all the drives. And remember to click install windows on the SSD drive?
VaultBoy636@reddit
You can just delete all the partitions and install windows on a fresh one. Personally im reusing my windows 11 install that was direct updated from 8.1 and i have no issues (even after multiple CPU and GPU swaps) so you may not need to fresh install (but it's recommended)
As for the HDDs, there's not really a reason to wipe them.
First_Musician6260@reddit
You'd wipe a hard drive for much the same reason as you'd wipe an SSD.
VaultBoy636@reddit
Aside from getting rid of data you don't need or selling it (latter not being the case), i can't think of a reason. There's the rare case where you have pending sectors and you need to zero the drives but if OP has that AND knows that it's the solution, he'd just go ahead with it without asking
First_Musician6260@reddit
..wouldn't be a use case for "getting rid of data you don't need"?
VaultBoy636@reddit
In case on moving a pc and doing a fresh install i assume people mean stuff like drivers or program files that would be harder to manually uninstall one by one than just formatting as a whole
RyleighGamesDev@reddit
There's a format option on the Windows installation drive select screen. You can format any connected drive on there before installing Windows.
Corruptshark123@reddit (OP)
Okay thanks a lot!