Question Clean All command question

[box o rocks]

Would using the 'clean all' command on a mechanical HDD dispose of any viruses and/or malware that may be on the drive? Including the boot sector?

 

[Math Geek]

"The clean all command erases the content of the drive securely. Different from the Diskpart clean command, it writes over every sector on the disk and completely zeroes out data on the disk. Hence, the deleted data can’t be recovered by usual tools."

it should remove anything and everything on the drive including all partitions, data and probably any dust from the cover as well

so yes it would be a good way to get rid of anything on the infected drive.

 

[USAFRet]

Would using the 'clean all' command on a mechanical HDD dispose of any viruses and/or malware that may be on the drive? Including the boot sector?

Yes.

 

[box o rocks]

Thank you, gentlemen.
Now, what about using the clean all command on a ssd? I've read that the OP area of the drive's memory is skipped by the clean all command. Any chance of a virus or malware infecting that area and reinfecting the drive?

 

[USAFRet]

Thank you, gentlemen.
Now, what about using the clean all command on a ssd? I've read that the OP area of the drive's memory is skipped by the clean all command. Any chance of a virus or malware infecting that area and reinfecting the drive?

No difference.
Where did you read this?

The possibility of getting a virus or malware that might live in some protected area of the drive, and then living through a /clean all, is so remote...you might as well put ALL your storage devices, both solid state and spinning, into the big shredder.

 

[box o rocks]

No difference.
Where did you read this?

There was an article here on Tom's Hardware entitled How to Securely Erase an SSD or HDD Before Selling It or Your PC.
Down near the end of the article the author discusses diskpart and makes the caveat that (the clean all command) "this method does not blank the overprovisioned blocks of the OS". I took that as meaning that the command could leave something behind. I have no idea if a virus could hide in that OP area or not. Hence the question. But you guys answered my question, so thank you and I'm good.

Totally unrelated...
Why am I always required to ask to have the panel side with "best answer" enabled? Am I doing something wrong? Or are we not using that any more?

 

[USAFRet]

Totally unrelated...
Why am I always required to ask to have the panel side with "best answer" enabled? Am I doing something wrong? Or are we not using that any more?

Creating a thread as Question enables the 'Best Answer' function.
Creating it as a Discussion does not.

The default is Discussion.

 

[box o rocks]

Ah. Good to know. I didn't even realize I did that. It says "questtion" up at the top, tho.