Does Clean Install Wipe All Drives Exclusive

There are two specific scenarios where "Clean Install" effectively wipes "all drives," but they require active user intervention:

Generally, yes. Linux installers also require you to partition drives manually. However, the interface is different. You must select "Something else" or "Manual partitioning" to ensure you only format the target drive. If you select "Erase disk and install Linux" with multiple drives connected, it may sometimes target the wrong drive depending on the distro. The "Physical Disconnect" method (Phase 1 above) is highly recommended for Linux beginners.

Many laptop users (Dell, HP, Lenovo) use the built-in "Reset this PC" or "Recovery Manager" instead of USB media. Some OEM recovery tools are lazy. They are programmed to revert the PC to "factory state." does clean install wipe all drives exclusive

There are two scenarios where a clean install might affect other drives:

Many users confuse "clean install" with "low-level format" or "zero-fill wipe." macOS (Recovery / Installer)

| Action | Wipes Drive C? | Wipes Drive D? | Wipes External Drives? | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Clean Install (Windows) | Yes (Target partition) | No | No (unless unplugged) | | Diskpart Clean | Yes (Entire physical disk) | Yes (if same disk) | Yes (if connected) | | Factory Reset (OEM) | Yes | Possibly | Possibly | | DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) | Yes | Yes | Yes (everything) |

The exclusive nuance: If your Drive D is a partition on the same physical hard drive as Drive C (e.g., a 1TB drive split into C: 500GB and D: 500GB), then a clean install using the "Delete partition" function will wipe both C and D because they are on the same physical disk. Linux (most installers: Ubuntu, Fedora, etc

If Drive D is a separate physical SSD (different hardware), a clean install will never wipe it unless you manually click on it and press delete.