[SOLVED] How to easily wipe an hard drive.

[SteelStruck]

Okay, so I recently bought a new sata SSD (240gb) and I am looking to transfer windows to the SSD from a 1.5tb hard drive I am pretty sure I know how to clone a hard drive using macrium reflect but then I want to put that hardrive back in my system, and transfer all my games/files to it but I want to get all the windows system files off of it before I start moving my games and stuff to it, so I have as much space as possible on my harddrive. What is the easiest way to wipe the hardrive (preferably digitally and not physically) Also, second question when I plug my harddrive back in after I have confirmed windows works on the SSD, in the bios how do I make sure I pick the right drive? Thank you so much for all your help.

 

[USAFRet]

To wipe the old drive, commandline diskpart and the clean sommand.

How to Diskpart Erase/Clean a Drive Through the Command Prompt | Support Seagate US

This article explains the Microsoft Diskpart Erase utility. The command that erases the drive during this process is "Clean". In this article "Clean" and erase are used interchangeably. Cleaning or erasing a storage device removes all data and partitions from the drive.

www.seagate.com

And to verify your cloning process...
-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------

 

[SteelStruck]

To wipe the old drive, commandline diskpart and the clean sommand.

How to Diskpart Erase/Clean a Drive Through the Command Prompt | Support Seagate US

This article explains the Microsoft Diskpart Erase utility. The command that erases the drive during this process is "Clean". In this article "Clean" and erase are used interchangeably. Cleaning or erasing a storage device removes all data and partitions from the drive.

www.seagate.com

And to verify your cloning process...
-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------

How would I use the commandline diskpart function and the clean command to wipe the hard drive?

 

[USAFRet]

How would I use the commandline diskpart function and the clean command to wipe the hard drive?

That link walks you through the steps.

 

[USAFRet]

Or here:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/85819-erase-disk-using-diskpart-clean-command-windows-10-a.html

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/format-hard-drive-command-prompt,37632.html

https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/reset-ssd-with-windows-diskpart
(even though that says "SSD", it applies to all drive types)

 

[SteelStruck]

Or here:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/85819-erase-disk-using-diskpart-clean-command-windows-10-a.html

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/format-hard-drive-command-prompt,37632.html

https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/reset-ssd-with-windows-diskpart
(even though that says "SSD", it applies to all drive types)

Oh awesome sorry I didn't see the link.

 

[SteelStruck]

Also when I plug my hard drive back in (before I clean it) how do I make sure I boot off of the SSD and not the hard drive?

 

[USAFRet]

Also when I plug my hard drive back in (before I clean it) how do I make sure I boot off of the SSD and not the hard drive?

Boot order in the BIOS.
If the SSD is first, that's what it will do. It will never get to the old HDD.

 

[SteelStruck]

Boot order in the BIOS.
If the SSD is first, that's what it will do. It will never get to the old HDD.

So because the SSD will boot up much faster than the hard drive, the computer will just automatically boot to the SSD. Is that what you are saying?

 

[USAFRet]

So because the SSD will boot up much faster than the hard drive, the computer will just automatically boot to the SSD. Is that what you are saying?

No.
If the SSD is first in the BIOS boot order, that is what the system will do.

If the HDD were instead first, it would boot from that.

It just goes down the priority list, until it finds something to boot from. Ignoring all that comes after.

 

[SteelStruck]

Okay, how would I make sure the SSD is first in the boot order?

 

[mdd1963]

By having it listed at the top/#1 in boot order...

 

[SteelStruck]

By having it listed at the top/#1 in boot order...

Sorry, I should have said that differently, I presume I would go into my ancient 2014 bios and try to find the boot order to change the SSD to /1#.

 

[USAFRet]

Sorry, I should have said that differently, I presume I would go into my ancient 2014 bios and try to find the boot order to change the SSD to /1#.

Yes, and that is a key part of the cloning steps above.