[SOLVED] Help erasing contents from HDD with Windows 10 installed

[mjwaller2]

I’ve recently purchased a Samsung SSD and cloned my HDD contents to the new drive. The SSD has been reliably booting with Windows (as the only drive plugged in) and all information intact. I’d like to wipe my previous HDD (which has windows installed) to start clean and use as extra storage.

please advise how I can wipe the HDD.

 

[Alabalcho]

From Disk Management - delete all volumes, create a new volume spanning the whole drive, format that new volume.

But make absolutely sure you've copied everything off that drive first, and that you're formatting the right volume.

 

[mjwaller2]

From Disk Management - delete all volumes, create a new volume spanning the whole drive, format that new volume.

thanks for your reply! I’ve run into a problem formatting because: A) when I try to boot the system with both drives in, it boots windows off the HDD (even with boot prio for the SSD) and then won’t even recognize the SSD drive

OR

B) when I boot solely off the HDD it won’t let me format the drive because windows is installed and it senses that my PC would be erased

 

[Alabalcho]

This means that your cloning process was not 100% successful, ir BIOS keeps booting off the HDD.

If you've sure cloning is OK - leave only the SSD connected, boot with Windows Install USB//DVD, and repair boot. Configure BIOS to bood only from SSD, then connect the HDD back

 

[onespeedbiker]

What happens when you want to boot with just the ssd attached? As far as formatting your hdd, use diskpart https://blogs.systweak.com/format-disk-using-diskpart-on-windows-10/