Best Wiping & Installing Win10 Method for HP Laptop

Brink said:

You could use the "Clean all" command in a command prompt at boot.
Erase Disk using Diskpart Clean Command in Windows 10
DBAN is also a good 3rd party program option.
Data Removal: Darik's Boot and Nuke - DBAN

Thank you again for this great info! I'll check it out. OCD side again, sorry, but if I were to do any of these methods would you be confident that it would do a great job in secure erasing the drive?

sn00ker said:

No problem and if you need a good back up software Macrium Reflect personal home version, its free too

Awesome! Actually, got it! I plan on getting the paid version as soon as it goes on sale.

"The recovery drive I will have to take a look at. Is it easy to recover or find the HP software online so I can reinstall those?"

NO, you can't get it from HP online because each recovery partition is unique to that model and hardware configuration. If it is new and came with Windows 10, then make a copy before going forward with your plan. Mine is 3 yrs old, came with Win 8.1 so my memory is hazy but I think there is a HP recovery console you boot into and there is an option to backup the HP Recovery partition. You'll know it's correctly done, if you get a message that you can delete the partition or contents now that it's backed up. Since I never would go back 3 yrs, I have since used the partition for storing all applications installed on my system for easy reinstall.

Brink said:

You should be pretty easy to follow along the tutorial for the "clean all" command.

Thank you!

mrgeek said:

"The recovery drive I will have to take a look at. Is it easy to recover or find the HP software online so I can reinstall those?"
NO, you can't get it from HP online because each recovery partition is unique to that model and hardware configuration. If it is new and came with Windows 10, then make a copy before going forward with your plan. Mine is 3 yrs old, came with Win 8.1 so my memory is hazy but I think there is a HP recovery console you boot into and there is an option to backup the HP Recovery partition. You'll know it's correctly done, if you get a message that you can delete the partition or contents now that it's backed up. Since I never would go back 3 yrs, I have since used the partition for storing all applications installed on my system for easy reinstall.

Ok, thank you for this info. Will do! I appreciate this. Thank you for your time.

sn00ker said:

To be totally honest nothing can be totally erased unless you smash the hell out of it but for what most people want or need its good enough the methods Brink mentions . Personaly, I like Active Killdisk it does more than most third party software

Awesome! Thank you! Sounds good!

It looks like I will think it through with all the advice I got and decide which route to take. I appreciate your responses. Very helpful.