HP Secure Erase

[Michael2310]

After using HP Secure Erase to securely wipe my system SSD, will I be able to reinstall Windows 10 and HP software and drivers from the recovery partition, or will Secure Erase wipe the recovery partition? If the recovery partition will be erased by Secure Erase, will I be able to reinstall Windows 10 and HP software and drivers using recovery media created using HP Recovery Manager before erasing the system drive? I have a HP 250 G6 Notebook PC running Windows 10 Home 64-bit Version 1909 (build 18363.720). Many thanks.

[WAWood]

@Michael2310 

Not used HP Secure Erase, but my guess, based on the name, is that it wiped the ENTIRE SSD, plus newer PCs that come with SSDs often do not include Recovery partitions due to the lack of available space.

If you made recovery media, then you should remove the HDD, insert that media, boot from it -- and then be able to restore your PC to working condition.

Good Luck

[Michael2310]

Thanks @WAWOOD. After further reading, I would also presume that HP Secure Erase would wipe the entire SSD using an ATA command, e.g.  BLOCK ERASE EXT or CRYPTO SCRAMBLE EXT. I now find that Secure Erase does not appear in the Security menu in my BIOS setup. I had wanted to erase all my data securely before implementing full disk encryption. I now realize that I should have encrypted before saving any data to the SSD.