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Using DBAN
Hello,Before running "DBAN" to wipe everything on both disks (old computer). Will the disks still be partitioned as they were, or have to repartition them.Answers will be appreciated.ThanksMotim
Hello,Before running "DBAN" to wipe everything on both disks (old computer). Will the disks still be partitioned as they were, or have to repartition them.Answers will be appreciated.ThanksMotim
All drives need at least 1 partition created before it can be formatted, so Yes, partitions would need to be recreated as desired. For simply storage a single would be needed but one can usually create up to 4 Primary partitions, then there's the Extended and Logical approaches. Multiple partitions are handy for storing different types of files but one can get carried away and have a nightmare of file management at times [been there done that].
You could just use the Windows format utility and untick the "quick format" box. That will write zeros to the disk.
There is no appreciable difference (doing it 2 or 10 or 100 times) unless you are planning to give your drives to the NSA and they for some reason decide to use an electron microscope to check each individual bit.
The partition table (which is separate from the data on the disk) is stored in the first few logical tracks of the drive (and in the case of GPT duplicated at the end also). A quick format just overwrites that leaving the data as it was. You could (if you wanted) reapply the partition table and you would see all your data again. This is often how file recovery software works.
With SSD it is more complicated and it is probably not possible to securely delete data although you can try secure erase for drive that (a) support it and (b) actually do it. I would not trust it unless your data is not interesting.
To answer your question though, formatting the disk destroys the partition table(s) so you would either have to make a new one or not. Zeroing the disk does both. A purchaser (and I've bought second hand SSD) would reformat anyway.
If your disk have interesting information on then it may be better to destroy them.