So if you have some simple windows laptops and you are not the most technical person what is the easiest way to first wipe the hard drive before using the rescue/image to restore if you needed to do that? How do you wipe or secure erase it if the OS is not cooperating and you can't boot to rescue disk? Do you need some other tool besides Macrium?
Most famous one DBAN: Download Darik's Boot and Nuke - MajorGeeks make a BOOT USB with it and completely wipe everything on disk. Just make darn sure it's right disk, no return from this one. One pass should be enough for this use.
Okay but if your computer is incapable of booting properly or you can't change the boot order or you can't do anything because a virus has corrupted everything, how can the laptop boot to the usb wipe disk tool to do the wipe/secure erase?
If it will not boot from that USB on that one than you'd have to remove drive and connect it by USB adapter or otherwise to some other computer, boot and do it from there. It could also be installed on a CD or DVD.
Another way would be to BOOT from USB/CD/DVD some Live Linux distro and use it's partitioning tools from it. In some cases if windows will not boot from USB, some live Linux distro might.
Hi there
You can run some commands from within Macrium -- the bootable version is basically WINPE so DISKPART should work, then simply CLEAN, Create partition and then Format - use the long (full) rather than a quick format.
As CountMike says if the machine is in such a state that it won't even boot from a USB, remove HDD, connect to another machine via USB-->SATA connector and re-format and restore your image -- then put it back into the original machine.
I'm not sure why though a machine could be damaged (by software) in such a way that it won't boot from a USB device -- the boot is done via ROM's so any virus would probably not be able to wipe your BIOS in any case.
Another way is to load a live Linux distro on to a USB and re-format the HDD. Things like GPARTED will be on the Live Linux distro.
Cheers
jimbo
If you cannot boot to a rescue usb flash drive or dvd, it is impossible to wipe hard drive whilst installed on same pc.
Even if you remove drive and wipe it on another pc, it would be a challenge to install windows 10 on it if you cannot boot to any rescue drive or installer.
It is possible to do it i.e. install windows 10 on that drive on another pc (disconnecting other hdd), then use sysprep to remove hardware drivers, but this is not for total beginners.
If your OS is working enough, and you can get to a command prompt, then it is possible to put Macrium Reflect boot drive files in a partition, and create a boot entry. Then you can select Macrium Reflect during boot up of pc without needing an external boot drive.
I split my programs myself from SSD and some on D Drive, Do I have to Image both in order to restore properly? Last time System wouldn't reactivate Windows 10 Pro after the restore procedure I did, so I ended up having to clean install anyways
Thanks for the info cereberus.
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