Should I clean and reformat my HDD?

[tanmayvij]

I suspect my Seagate Barracuda, used as a boot drive along with two other volumes, is not doing good. My Windows 10 Pro 64-bit v1803 got corrupted twice in three days. As of now I have performed a fresh install of Windows, but it might die again, so to be safe, should I do a clean reformat of all the partitions on the disk?

I plan to use diskpart clean followed by “convert basic” since currently the HDD is a dynamic disk. However I'm not sure how will I create new partitions after typing diskpart clean

Should I use ”format=fs ntfs” or “create partition primary”? Also, should “convert basic” be used immediately after “clean” or after creating the partitions?

 

[Tanyac]

I assume you have an install USB from which you will install Windows 10?
After cleaning the disk you do not need to convert it to a basic disk.

The order in which you do the steps will be (Assuming there is more than 1 disk in your computer)

list disk
select disk x (where x is the number of the disk you want to work with)
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick label=<label> (where <label is any valid name you want to give the disk).

However, I have found that using diskpart to format the disk can interfere with the partitions windows normally creates when selecting a "cleaned" disk on a fresh install.

For that reason I would normally do it like this (I have 5 disks in my system and disk 4 is my 970 evo that I want to install Windows 10 on)

Boot from my USB install disk
Install Now
press Shift-F10 to bring up a command prompt
diskpart
list disk (always a good idea to check Wouldn't want to wipe the wrong disk)
select disk 4
clean
exit
exit
Now, back in Windows installer, select disk 4 and let Windows create the efi, system recovery and other partitions.

If you do not want to use the whole disk as one partition, when you click new to create the partition you will be asked how much of the disk to use for the install partition. Type the size in MB. You might want to account for the extra partitions if you want a specific size.

Have a look at step 5 on this web page, that will give you an idea of what partitions windows installer creates by default
https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/software/operating-systems/1401617/how-to-clean-install-windows-10-and-create-boot-media/page/0/1

Or you could shrink the partition after you have finished installing windows.

Hope that makes sense.

Also; You might want to run a chkdsk /f to scan the drive for problems.

 

[smorizio]

before you wipe the drive download hdtune read your drive health warnings. see if there are any that telling you the drive is on it way out. also download and run seatools. not the short test the long test see if the drive passes. if the hard drive is fine run memtest overnight from a usb stick. find out why windows is going south before you waste your time on a reload.

 

[tanmayvij]

I assume you have an install USB from which you will install Windows 10?
After cleaning the disk you do not need to convert it to a basic disk.

The order in which you do the steps will be (Assuming there is more than 1 disk in your computer)

list disk
select disk x (where x is the number of the disk you want to work with)
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick label=<label> (where <label is any valid name you want to give the disk).

However, I have found that using diskpart to format the disk can interfere with the partitions windows normally creates when selecting a "cleaned" disk on a fresh install.

For that reason I would normally do it like this (I have 5 disks in my system and disk 4 is my 970 evo that I want to install Windows 10 on)

Boot from my USB install disk
Install Now
press Shift-F10 to bring up a command prompt
diskpart
list disk (always a good idea to check Wouldn't want to wipe the wrong disk)
select disk 4
clean
exit
exit
Now, back in Windows installer, select disk 4 and let Windows create the efi, system recovery and other partitions.

If you do not want to use the whole disk as one partition, when you click new to create the partition you will be asked how much of the disk to use for the install partition. Type the size in MB. You might want to account for the extra partitions if you want a specific size.

Have a look at step 5 on this web page, that will give you an idea of what partitions windows installer creates by default
https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/software/operating-systems/1401617/how-to-clean-install-windows-10-and-create-boot-media/page/0/1

Or you could shrink the partition after you have finished installing windows.

Hope that makes sense.

Also; You might want to run a chkdsk /f to scan the drive for problems.

Does that mean the Windows installation wizard will recognize the drive even if no partitions are created with diskpart and I exit right after "clean"? And I can create the partitions within the wizard?

Also, I ran a chkdsk /f /r but it spit out a thousand "file segment unreadable" errors and then I got a BSOD in the middle of chkdsk

P.S. I want to convert it to basic since I want to use bitlocker on the drive volumes.

Have a look at step 5 on this web page, that will give you an idea of what partitions windows installer creates by default
https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/software/operating-systems/1401617/how-to-clean-install-windows-10-and-create-boot-media/page/0/1

This is something I've been wondering for years, as to why my computer never had a system-reserved or a recovery partition. When I bought my PC, it came with Windows Vista and has ever since ran Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, but to the best of my memory, never had any extra partitions, only the Primary System partition aka C: Drive

 

[tanmayvij]

before you wipe the drive download hdtune read your drive health warnings. see if there are any that telling you the drive is on it way out. also download and run seatools. not the short test the long test see if the drive passes. if the hard drive is fine run memtest overnight from a usb stick. find out why windows is going south before you waste your time on a reload.

The HDD failed the SeaTools Long Generic Test at 17%.

 

[seagate_surfer]

tanmayvij, if the long test did not pass there is not much else to do.