Does Clean Install Wipe All Drives Exclusive |best| File

| Action | Wipes Drive C? | Wipes Drive D? | Wipes External Drives? | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Yes (Target partition) | No | No (unless unplugged) | | Diskpart Clean | Yes (Entire physical disk) | Yes (if same disk) | Yes (if connected) | | Factory Reset (OEM) | Yes | Possibly | Possibly | | DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) | Yes | Yes | Yes (everything) |

If you use BitLocker or other encryption on a secondary drive and you don't back up the recovery key, a clean install of the OS might lock you out of that secondary drive forever. The data isn't "wiped," but it becomes inaccessible. How to Ensure Your Other Drives Stay Safe does clean install wipe all drives exclusive

If you are about to reinstall your OS to fix a buggy computer or sell a device, you need to understand the exact truth: It almost exclusively targets the drive you select for the operating system. | Action | Wipes Drive C

The installer creates new system partitions (EFI, MSR, Recovery, and Primary) on the target drive only . It does not touch other physical drives. | | :--- | :--- | :--- |