How to Delete All Partitions on a Hard Drive?

Clearing disk will delete all partitions on a hard drive, and wipe all data on the disk you select.

Posted by @AOMEI September 29, 2024 Updated By @AOMEI June 7, 2023

Overview of Delete Partitions

Once, one of my neighbors asked me to help with his computer and I was always invited to solve PC problems by my neighbors and friends since I was engaged in this software company and I was happy that I could help him make full use of our partition manager.

Actually, he wanted to extend his c partition but he did not have an unallocated space on his computer and he did not want to merge any other partition to c except f, but partition f was not adjacent to c. Still, if he could merge f with c, he did not need the data on it any more. In such case, just as I told him, he should delete f partition first to get an unallocated space. Then, he could enlarge c partition with the unallocated space. Like this, he got all he intended. It was easy and not difficult as what he expected.

If you have several partitions on a disk and you don't need them anymore, however, you don't want to delete those partitions one by one; in this case, "Delete All Partitions" will help you format hard drive and remove all partitions once and for all. This function applies in all Windows Operating System, all editions (both 32 and 64 bit), such as Windows 7/8/10/11, Windows Server systems (including Server 2012 R2 and 2008 R2) and Windows SBS (Small Business Server). After that, your disk will become blank and you can make full use of this disk by re-partition it. Then, how to delete partitions on a hard disk? Please look the below.

How to Delete Partitions on Hard Drive?

Before you do

  • Download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant on a Windows computer.
  • If the disk from which you are going to delete all partitions contains some important data, please create a backup for those data and save the image file on another drive before you delete all partitions for the data will be formatted.
  • If there are other applications running on the partition which you are going to perform, AOMEI Partition Assistant will notice you to close those applications or to execute this operation under PreOS Mode. Therefore, in order to avoid the dilemma, you can close these applications in advance.

How to Delete All Partitions with Partition Assistant

1. Select the disk that you want to clear in main window; right-click it and select the "Delete all Partitions" option to open the related dialog.

2. Select the delete method in the following dialog, and there are two options:

  • Option One: Delete all partitions on a hard disk. (The data which has been deleted is recoverable if you choose option one in this situation)
  • Option Two: Delete all partitions and wipe all data on the hard drive. If you choose this one, even data recovery software may not recover data on these partitions. Therefore, please think twice before you decide to do this operation. Or, you can just make a backup of these data before deletion.

3. To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed". Then, several minutes later, all the partitions on the disk will be deleted forever.

 

How to Securely Clear Data on Solid State Drive in Windows 7?

Solid State Drives (SSDs) are now very popular nowadays and are widely applied to computers as the replacement for traditional hard drives. In case you need to clear SSD, you can try the newly developed feature, "Secure Erase SSD", on AOMEI Partition Assistant. Now, I’ll show you the detailed steps of using this feature.

To Clear SSD Disk:

1. Connect the SSD from which partitions will be deleted to a PC through SATA slot.

2. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, click the "Wipe" main tab and select "SSD Secure Erase".

3. Choose the SSD and here takes my Disk 1 Kingston SSD as an example.

4. In general, SSD erasing will encounter a frozen state which is a protection for SSD. Do a Hot Swap to release it.

5. Hot Swap makes disk erasing workable. Now, it's the erasing process.

*How to Perform a Hot Swap?

  1. Open computer case cover or back cover or hard shell on laptop.

  2. Find the selected SSD and unplug the power cable off SSD.

  3. Unplug SSD's SATA cable.

  4. Reconnect the SATA cable to the SATA or IDE port.

  5. Reconnect the power cable to the power port.

When the erasing process completes, AOMEI Partition Assistant will prompt a window saying that it has erased the SSD successfully. Next, I would get unallocated space on that SSD. You will see there is more than one way to delete all partitions on a disk on the purpose of clearing it. AOMEI Partition Assistant has different strategies for different types of disk. So great, right? Another feature of this program called "Wipe Hard Drive" is worth a shot.

Conclusion

With the help of "Delete all partitions" tool in Partition Assistant, you can easily and quickly delete all partitions on a hard drive, which will save your time. And, you can choose to wipe all data on the disk if data on the drive is not important.

In the following situations, you might need to delete all partitions:
  • You do not need these partitions anymore.
  • You do not want all the data on these partitions forever.
  • You want to merge the partition with another partition but they are not adjacent to each other.
  • You want some unallocated space to extend another partition.

Also, there are more useful and identical features in Paartition Assistant available. You can use the feature "Wipe Disk" and "SSD Secure Erase" to erase a hard drive and SSD.

 

Notes:

  • Please do not delete all partitions on a system disk, because Windows needs these information to start correctly and doing that will make your computer unbootable the next time when you start it.

  • If you delete a primary partition, the empty space you get is called unallocated disk space. If you delete a logical partition via Disk Management , the empty space is called free space, then you will need to delete the free space again to have it as unallocated space. You can now use the empty space to create additional volumes.

  • If you are not tired with repeated operations and are willing to delete the partitions one by one, obviously you have another way to delete those partitions with AOMEI partition manager. Yes! Delete them one after another by repeatedly choosing "Delete Partition".

  • There is also another method - merge these partitions and delete them all. You may not merge all the partitions into one, but it can still decrease the time you click "Delete Partition". Nomatter what way you choose, you can get what you want. Still, "Delete All Partitions" is the easiest and fastest one.

FAQs:

Q: How long will it take to delete all partitions on a hard drive?

A: The time to delete all partitions on a drive depends on many factors, for example, drive condition, amount of data, and so on.

Q: Is it able to recover data and partitions after I use the feature "Delete All Partitions"?

A: If you select the first Delete all partitions on a hard disk, the data might be recoverable with some professional recovery tools. If you select the second Delete all partitions and wipe all data on the hard drive, it is almost unable to recover. The operation is Irreversible.