Resetting a hard drive to factory settings

[Seb_Poole]

Hi I would like to reset my Western digital 1tb hard drive so it is like new out of the box. I have some stuff installed on it however it is all on another hard drive too. I was wondering if deleting all the partitions will do it or not. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Sammyjo20]

Hi I would like to reset my Western digital 1tb hard drive so it is like new out of the box. I have some stuff installed on it however it is all on another hard drive too. I was wondering if deleting all the partitions will do it or not. Thanks for any suggestions.

It's easier to just format it completely and then re-partition it if it asks to. Windows has a built in feature.

- Sam

 

[thx1138v2]

What you need to do is determined by what you want to accomplish.

If all you want to do is to reuse the space, formatting/partitioning will accomplish that.

If you want to wipe the data so you can sell it to someone else without exposing what was previously on the drive, it gets a lot more complicated. Search "HDD wipe" or "HDD secure wipe".

There is no way to set it back to how it was when it came out of the box.