Will the data in my other partitions be also erased if i clean install windows

Question

I need a clear and a 100% accurate answer for this, because this is a very responsible question.

I have two hard disks in my laptop at the moment, so , I’m about to clean install windows 11 on my new SSD, so the questions are,

1.Will the data in my drive D partition be also erased if I clean install windows on my new SSD?

2.Also when selecting the partition, the setup shows “delete”, or “format” on specific drives, if I select “delete” on the old windows partition(old C drive of my HDD) will this do any data removal on my D as well?

Answer 1

When you perform a Clean Install, during setup process, the Windows will display list of available partition and in this mode you won't see it as partition C: or D: so, it is important to add a correct label and take a note of the size of partition, so make sure you won't delete the wrong partition. Then you have options like format and delete and in this case, like the name all data in the partition will be removed. However, you may select to format one partition (the one Windows is installed) and in such a case other partition won't affected. You may even install Windows without formatting any partitions and in this case, Windows will install and files and folders from the previous version of Windows will be placed in a folder called "Windows.old" and you could retrieve them later.
In general, unless you specify to format or delete a partition or perform other operations like combine, your data will be remained and installing Windows in one partition won't affect other partitions. However, as a best practice it is recommended to back up your data before installing Windows.

Answer 2

Normally the answer is no, but if the data is important then I'd copy it off to removable just in case of user errors during windows setup.

--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

Answer 3

Sometimes Windows can install partitions on one disk drive that are needed by another disk drive.

When performing a clean install typically all partitions on one disk drive are deleted making an unallocated disk drive.

Then Windows will create default partitions.

By definition a clean install starts with an unallocated disk drive.
So if you're performing a clean install then all partitions on the disk drive are deleted making an unallocated disk drive.

If you want to dual boot then you can clean a partition.
This is not a clean install. This is cleaning a partition.

Please perform the following steps: (all are diagnostic)

1) Open disk management: (when launched by default the rows and columns are compressed and characters are cut off)

a) Widen these rows disk 0, disk 1, disk 2, etc > make sure that no characters are cut off

b) Widen these columns: Status and Volume > make sure that no characters are cut off

Post images or share links into this thread.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2503-how-post-screenshot-disk-management.html

2) Open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste: (all at one time)

bcdedit
reagentc /info
diskpart
lis dis
lis vol
sel dis 0
det dis
lis par
sel par 1
det par
sel par 2
det par
sel par 3
det par
sel par 4
det par
sel par 5
det par
sel par 6
det par
sel par 7
det par
sel dis 1
det dis
lis par
sel par 1
det par
sel par 2
det par
sel par 3
det par
sel par 4
det par
sel par 5
det par
sel par 6
det par
sel par 7
det par

Post a share link into this thread using one drive, drop box, or google drive.

This is a tutorial on Windows 11 clean install:
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/clean-install-windows-11.99/

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