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Clean VS Formatting a Hard Drive, Can You Tell Me Their Difference

I have been working on the Command Prompt commands these days. Is using diskpart and then typing clean will erase all the data? How about formatting? What's the difference between the two commands, format and clean?

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Sherly· Answered on Apr 19, 2024

The two commands "format" and "clean" are both common commands used in Diskpart. But they are totally different. Diskpart is an updated command-line disk partitioning tool to replace the old fdisk, which supports all Windows users to run Diskpart syntax parameters to manage disk partitions on laptops and even external storage devices. You can use this tool to format/extend/shrink/delete partitions. As mentioned above, different commands lead to different results.

"Clean" means you want to delete all partitions on a hard disk and delete all existing data. This command completely erases a hard drive or SSD and wipes out all existing data. 

"Format" means you want to format a partition/volume and change its file system type to NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, etc.

Hence, they are completely different. However, I once used Diskpart commands, and I typed the wrong disk number. This command deleted all my data on another hard disk. I was heartbroken on that day.

To avoid these accidents and data loss, I recommend EaseUS Partition Master to help. It is a reliable third-party tool. It can wipe a hard drive before selling or format a hard drive to any file system. Without using any commands, you can manage your hard drive well.

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