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I have an old HD that has windows installed on it..How do I erase everything?

R

roncarter

Golden Member
ITs an old HD. I have a new one now but I Wanted to use this old 20 gig one just to store some stuff. I already have one C drive and I want to make my old HD the D drive. How do I erase everything on this old HD and just use it as D drive
 
Two options... boot into DOS and FDISK and Format, or try formatting in Windows.

After installing the harddrive as the slave drive on the same IDE cable or master/slave on the second IDE cable (depends on what you want or what is already installed) boot it up. In Windows Explorer the drive should be recognized so select it, right click on it and choose format.

If you want to do it in DOS, boot up with a Win98SE or WinME bootdisk (available at www.bootdisk.com) and type in FDISK, just follow the onscreen commands.
 
Everyone here is right.

Unless its in a machine on its own, and your afraid of somone getting ahold of any sensitive data on the disk, I think it would be easier to just install it as a slave and format in windows. But thats just my opinion.
 
Heh... I always keep a boot disk with 98SE's format.com on it... feel free to use a 98SE boot disk. When I am installing the HD, I unplug all other HDs but the one I want to format, then use boot disk, fdisk the only drive you can find (its quicker than standard format), powerdown, plug drives in like you want, boot, then use modern (2k, xp) to format the drive the way you really want in the background.
 
You shouldn't have to unplug your current hard drive to use the boot disc... Just hook up the new drive as a slave on the same IDE chain.

1. Boot up with the win98 boot disk.
2. When you get the A: prompt, type "D:" (without the quotes).
3. At the D: prompt, type "format d: /q" (again, without quotes).
4. BAM, you're done.
 
i unplug to do formats because once i didn't and DOS assigned the drive letters differently than windows did. i formated the wrong disk and lost 5 gigs of mp3s, pre-napster.
 
Originally posted by: llc00ljoel
http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?DN=1011054

check this out...it allows you to completely wipe out stuff with just a simple debug script
Click to expand...
You sure about that link?
Keeps bouncing me back to Dell Support Home.
I would like to find this debug script, as I have a HD with (I think) a system partition on it and I can't seem to get it to fdisk or format properly.
It's been far too long since I've used debug to remember most of it.

 
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