When reinstalling Windows 10, will all drives be formatted or only the drive Windows is installed on to?

[Eddlicious]

Hey,

Question's in the title, what follows is just a short background summary of where this question arose.

I've been looking into upgrading my PC's CPU and motherboard this month since August and I've one by one been running in to questions about the whole process. Most recent is whether or not all the drives on my PC will be formatted with a Windows reinstall.

I was made to understand that only the drive on to which Windows will be installed to will be formatted, but now after bringing this all up in a conversation I'm lost again and not 100% sure what's right, so I'm coming back to this forums for like the third 'Request solutions'-thread to try and get some help.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ThatVietGuy]

The drive that you choose to install Windows to will be the one that gets formatted. Every other drive should be safe.

BUT! You should always disconnect all the other drives other than the primary drive to avoid any mistakes.

 

[velocityg4]

Definitely disconnect all drives. One very simple mistake can mean hours of data recovery. On the remaining drive. Delete all partitions on the intended boot drive. Then re-partition as desired. This insures the boot entries are clean. Sometimes Windows will think there are multiple installations on a drive if you don't do this. It doesn't hurt anything. It's just annoying having a screen pop up asking you to choose which Windows installation to boot to every time you boot.

 

[Eddlicious]

Definitely disconnect all drives. One very simple mistake can mean hours of data recovery. On the remaining drive. Delete all partitions on the intended boot drive. Then re-partition as desired. This insures the boot entries are clean. Sometimes Windows will think there are multiple installations on a drive if you don't do this. It doesn't hurt anything. It's just annoying having a screen pop up asking you to choose which Windows installation to boot to every time you boot.

Is reconnecting a drive as easy as plug n' play after Windows 10 has been reinstalled?

 

[velocityg4]

Definitely disconnect all drives. One very simple mistake can mean hours of data recovery. On the remaining drive. Delete all partitions on the intended boot drive. Then re-partition as desired. This insures the boot entries are clean. Sometimes Windows will think there are multiple installations on a drive if you don't do this. It doesn't hurt anything. It's just annoying having a screen pop up asking you to choose which Windows installation to boot to every time you boot.

Is reconnecting a drive as easy as plug n' play after Windows 10 has been reinstalled?

You might have to tell the BIOS which drive is the primary drive (boot drive).

 

[Eddlicious]

You might have to tell the BIOS which drive is the primary drive (boot drive).

If it comes to that, how is this performed?