Clean Hard Drive

Joe Law · From: Leslie ,GA

Hello Wiz,
I'll direct this request to you, but will take anyones knowledgeable solution.
A while back my operating system (Windows XP Pro) crashed. I opted to get a new larger harddrive as I found one (160Gig) on sale and installed my op. System and all programs on it, with the efforts of my computer savvy son.

My thinking was to use the old drive(40 G) solely as storage for music and picture files. My question is what do I need to do to clean everything off this drive and prepare it to be used as just another storage drive? I think I can handle it OK just don't want to screw anything up as it is working to good.
Joe Law Thanks

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

Just "reformat" the hard drive and the entire drive will be available for use.

You should be able to do that from your Operating System. Connect the drive to your system - I assume you have an IDE I/O, just as you have done with your new drive. The device addressing ("strapping") will have to be correctly set. Most systems in the last 8 or so years use the "cable select" addressing method rather than the old Master/Slave. With cable select, the drive at the end of the cable becomes the "master".

Once the drive is physically installed and detected by the BIOS (it must be detected and detected properly by the BIOS or Windows will not detect it), and Windows started you can reformat it. Open the Windows Explorer, RIGHT click on the drive letter thne LEFT click on FORMAT. Follow the instructions to format the drive. You do not want to make the drive bootable.

Joe Law · From: Leslie ,GA

Jack,
Thanks for the reply. This was what I thought I had to do but just wanted to make sure this was all I needed to do. I will reformat it shortly.

I pickup cars from dealerships as a Retirement hobby of sorts and I had the oppurtunity to get one a few months ago from the Ford dealership in your town. I had heard of Inverness all my life but somehow had never had the oppurtunity to visit there until now. I was impressed with your town,it was pretty with all the lakes and old charm homes mixed with the modern stuff. Looked like a good place to live and fish.

Thanks again for the help, maybe I'll catch you at one of the steel shows as I'm a regular to most all of them at one time or another as a very good listener.
Joe

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