Diskpart Clean All Help

[reluttr]

So I installed a SSD and converted my existing HDD into an external device. The only problem is that I needed to format the drive first.

I didn't entirely understand the description for the clean command and ended up using the clean all command thinking it was what was needed to remove all partitions from the drive.

Here are the steps I took
-run CMD as admin
-diskpart
-list disk *drive I am formatting is disk 1*
-select disk 1
-clean all

I ended up closing out the window and restarting the PC to make sure I canceled the process, after rebooting I then redid all of the steps and simply left "all" off at the end. I then opened the partition manager, initialized the drive, and added a partition.


Now my concern is, I'm still not quite sure about the parameters of the clean all command and while doing research about it when trying to figure out why the process was taking so long I read where someone accidentally formatted their windows install drive using the command.

By doing it the way I did is there any chance that the clean all command touched data on my install drive, disk 0? I would assume that if it did the system would not have booted and it would show up as blank space in a partition manager since the process marked the drive as clear BEFORE writings everything to 0. Correct?

 

[karenjoly]

"Is there any chance that the clean all command touched data on my install drive, disk 0?"

When you select a drive/volume, the focus remains on that object until you select a different object.

clean

Removes any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk .

all

Same as the clean command but includes that each and every sector on the disk is zeroed (secure erase), which completely deletes all data contained on the disk. This will make the data on the disk unrecoverable. It will take about an hour per 320 GB to finish running .

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-vista/cc766465(v=ws.10)

So the answer is NO.

 

[das_stig]

Diskpart, Select Disk 1, Clean, Exit

Thats all I do at work for second drives to zap everything.

 

[reluttr]

Whew, that's a relief. lol

Even though I guess if it came down to it I would just reinstall windows again.

Is it even possible to do a clean all without selecting a drive? For example, if I would skip the select disk step and just had typed "clean all" would it have wiped all drives available?