Deleting an internal hard drive I'm replacing.

[maxxpower18]

My current laptop hard drive still works, but I'm replacing it with a larger hard drive. Since I currently have Windows 7 installed on my current hard drive, how can I delete everything that's on it before replacing it with my new hard drive.

I'm assuming I have to delete my current hard drive so I can reauthorize Windows 7 when I install the new hard drive.

 

[ShadowVVL]

boot up on a different drive go into computer then left click on the drive you want to erase and click format.

before formating make sure that you have a windows7 disk or backup.some oems put partitions on the hdd with the os backup which you can back up on disks.

 

[maxxpower18]

boot up on a different drive go into computer then left click on the drive you want to erase and click format.

I'm slightly confused because I only have one drive where I can boot from.

 

[ShadowVVL]

If you have pc or can use a friends computer you can plug it in and format it. you can also get a use usb to sata or esata cable.

you can get a usb to sata here... edit I updated the link .
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812123312

 

[maxxpower18]

Ah, I see. Thank you sir.

 

[_Rick_]

Or boot onto a usb key with a linux distribution on it and dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M
assuming sda is your hard drive.

 

[balane]

I went through this recently and I booted to a cd containing Parted Magic. (If you don't know Parted Magic is like an operating system that runs 100% off the CD and has a ton of great tools. This will be a handy disk to have around for all sorts of stuff.)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/par...gic 2012_07_28/pmagic_2012_07_28.iso/download
(Just download the iso and burn it to a disk.)

From within Parted Magic under tools I did a secure erase on the hard drive so it was totally wiped. Then I removed that blank hard drive, installed my new ssd and installed Windows on it.

It was much easier than I thought it would be.

Edit: Changed typo from Gparted to Parted Magic, ignore what I typed if you saw the Gparted link.

.