Does Clean Install Wipe All Drives Exclusive !new! Jun 2026

Take note of the exact storage capacity of each drive. This is often the easiest way to tell a 250GB boot SSD apart from a 1TB data HDD during the selection process. Summary of What is Wiped Primary Drive (OS) Secondary Drives Clean Install (Advanced) Wiped (if formatted) Untouched (unless manually selected) Reset (Keep My Files) Apps/Settings Removed Untouched Reset (Remove Everything) Optional Wipe (defaults to OS drive only)

When you perform a clean install of an operating system (e.g., Windows, macOS, Linux), it does not automatically wipe all drives exclusively. Here's what happens: does clean install wipe all drives exclusive

This is where Windows or macOS lives. During a clean install, this partition is formatted. Everything on it—your documents, your desktop files, and your installed programs—will be deleted. Take note of the exact storage capacity of each drive

A typical PC has multiple "volumes" (drives or partitions). For example: Here's what happens: This is where Windows or macOS lives

Many laptop users (Dell, HP, Lenovo) use the built-in "Reset this PC" or "Recovery Manager" instead of USB media. Some OEM recovery tools are lazy. They are programmed to revert the PC to "factory state."

When you perform a clean install (usually via a USB boot drive), the installer asks: "Where do you want to install Windows/macOS/Linux?" Primary Drive:

If your Drive D is a partition on the same physical hard drive as Drive C (e.g., a 1TB drive split into C: 500GB and D: 500GB), then a clean install using the "Delete partition" function will wipe both C and D because they are on the same physical disk.