Should i wipe both hard drives?

[dunkirkman]

Hey guys, so I'm building an entirely new setup. Im going to re install Windows 10 on my SSD for the new motherboard so I don't experience any issues down the road. When I do this, I have saves on my SSD as well as HDD but I don't care if I lose them.

What I'm saying is, do I need to wipe both drives when doing a fresh install?

 

[USAFRet]

Hey guys, so I'm building an entirely new setup. Im going to re install Windows 10 on my SSD for the new motherboard so I don't experience any issues down the road. When I do this, I have saves on my SSD as well as HDD but I don't care if I lose them.

What I'm saying is, do I need to wipe both drives when doing a fresh install?

When doing the new install, have only the one drive connected.
Delete all partitions as you do the install.

Later, reconnect the other one.


Also...
Read and do this before you change any parts:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-change
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3164428/windows-build-1607-activation.html

 

[geofelt]

When you do a fresh install on the ssd, you can opt to erase/reformat the ssd first.
That is the easy thing to do.

Do not have the HDD attached when you do the windows install.
If you forget, windows will load hidden recovery partitions on it, making it all but impossible to ever remove the hdd.
After windows is installed, just reattach the HDD and reformat it.

 

[InvalidError]

I agree with the above: only connect the target OS install drive to the system to avoid any accidental modification/deletion/formatting/etc. on your other drive(s). A long time ago, I once accidentally quick-formatted the wrong HDD while re-installing an OS. Thankfully, I happened to have an unerase tool on that partition that maintained a file name database and I was able to unerase most of the drive with only a few clicks. I have never re-installed an OS with anything other than the target drive connected since.

 

[dunkirkman]

What do you mean by making it all impossible to remove the HDD?

 

[USAFRet]

What do you mean by making it all impossible to remove the HDD?

Not physically impossible, but...

Windows has a nasty habit of putting the boot partition on the second drive.
Take that drive out, and no boot for you.

Easiest way to prevent that is to have only the one target drive connected when you do the install.

And of course, the "oops, I misclicked and formatted the wrong drive".
See that here every day.

 

[geofelt]

What do you mean by making it all impossible to remove the HDD?

The hidden recovery partitions on the HDD will forever be required to be present in order to boot .

 

[dunkirkman]

Alright thank you 😀