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    How to wipe hard drive on VAIO and reinstall OEM Windows?

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by sabrina112, Sep 24, 2013.

  1. sabrina112

    sabrina112 Newbie

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    Hi, I have a VAIO SVE17 laptop running Windows 8 OEM, 1 Tb internal drive.

    I need to do a security wipe of the entire hard drive that contains corporate data, but after the wipe I need to get the laptop to the original OS installed state.

    I noticed that there are 5 partitions preconfigured on the hard drive (listed below)
    The fifth partiton is the one formatted NTFS and assigned drive letter C.
    My question is, If I boot from a live DVD and completely wipe this 5th partition, will I be able to install the OS again after the wipe ?
    Also, could any of the other partitions contain any of our corporate data?
    Will BIOS start the install process if the 5th partition is wiped, or is there anything else I should watch out for to not brick the system ?

    Any info would be greatly appreciated, Thanks

    These are the partions:
    1 - OEM Partition 260 Mb
    2 - Recovery Partition 1.44 Gb
    3 - EFI System Partition 260 Mb
    4 - Recovery Partition 36.19 Gb
    5 - Boot,Crash Dump, Primary Partition (Drive C) 893 Gb
     
  2. James D

    James D Notebook Prophet

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    Why don't you use ASSIST button? Check those options, I know older versions ciuld delete information with US Government standart.
    Or just restore factory defaults with it and use CCleaner.
     
  3. sabrina112

    sabrina112 Newbie

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    Ok thanks I wasn't aware it had this feature. I've already remove all the VAIO stuff, so ASSIST doesn't do anything, I guess I have to reinstall and try.
     
  4. James D

    James D Notebook Prophet

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    NO-NO. Shut down your laptop and then press Assist button.