Few Questions regarding complete HDD wipe and then OS reinstall on to SSD

acelinhearn

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Dec 20, 2017
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Hi all,

I have a few questions, I have just bought a 500GB SSD Drive that will be arriving on Saturday. I currently have a 1TB HDD which is now 4 years old so it's pretty slow on start up (The rest of the PC has been upgraded 2 months ago), so I would like to completely wipe everything on my PC including Windows and reinstall it on to the new SSD. It'll be nice just to wipe everything and start fresh with Windows, Drivers and a couple games on the SSD aand then use the HDD for general storage.

Now my questions are:

1. How can I COMPLETELY wipe my HDD including Windows 10?
2. If I wipe my HDD including Windows 10, when it comes to reinstalling Windows can I use the previous Windows key that was on the PC previously again?
3. On install how I can I choose where Windows is installed? (SSD)
4. What program can I use to completely wipe everything tomorrow night ready for the SSD to go in?

Any help will be greatly appreciated and any tips will be too!

Thank you.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
1. You wipe that HDD after you have it up and running on the SSD

2. Yes, but you don't need it. A reinstall on the same system will activate without entering the license key.

3. You have only the SSD connected when you do this install

4. You do that after it is running on the SSD< and you can use Disk Management to wipe the HDD.
Or, the commandline function diskpart, and the clean command.

How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10

 

nobspls

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Mar 14, 2018
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If you insist of using 3rd party software to wipe the disk, there are too many options to list. But there is really no need, unless you are paranoid and you plan on giving/selling the old HDD to someone else.

What you should learn to use is the windows "diskpart" from the commandline. It will let your delete all partitions completely, and you can do this after you get a clean install on your SSD.

To install cleanly on your SSD and not have the old HDD get in the way, just unplug your old HDD and put the SSD into its place and take over the old connectors. That would be simplest and least fussy way.

And when windows is up and running good, you can then plug in the HDD into another SATA port power it from another power connector, or if you want get an external USB enclosure and convert the old HDD to a external USB harddisk. However you like it, you now get the chance to pull data you may want from your old HDD to your new SSD. And then after that you can do diskpart and reformat the old HDD to its new purpose.

Please note that "Disk Management" will not delete the Windows recovery partitions. It insists on treating them as protected.
 

acelinhearn

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Dec 20, 2017
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Thank you for your help. I will use the diskpart command in CMD and do it that way after clean install of Windows on to the SSD.