[hard drive] moving systems

mydragon15

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Jun 25, 2012
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I am building my own computer and planning on using 2 old hard drives from some computers i tore apart.
I actually have 3 old hard drives
2 of them are 160 gb 7200 rpm barriccuda and the 3rd is an 80 gb 7200 rpm bariccuda.

I forgot to wipe them before i took them out of their computers so i was wondering when i put them in the one i am building will i be able to wipe the hard drives then or is there another way i can do it?

i no longer have the computers i took them from as they were old desktops and got thrown away after i got what i wanted out of them.
 
What you can do is when you finish building your computer you can connect one of the drives that you weill be usinf as the OS drive and load the Operating system on it. The Windows install program will format the drive before it loads the OS onto it.
Then you can connect the other hard drives and go into Disk Management and delete the partitions and then make a new partition on each and then format and give each a drive letter.
If you want to go further with the formating there are some free programs that will secure erase a hard drive if that's what you want to do.
 

ram1009

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Unless those HDDs have been sitting in a drawer somewhere they need to be replaced. They are definitely beyond my 3 year limit. Why do you think most OEM warranties end at 3 years? It's because the failure rate accelerates at that point.
 

mydragon15

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Jun 25, 2012
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i will get a new one later but for now i will keep a one as a back up incase the others fail.
This is a starting computer and i am on a budget and will be doing all the final touch ups to it after christmas so for now i will be putting atleast 1 of the hdd into it
 

ram1009

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I understand. I just want you to be aware of the risks.
 

mydragon15

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Jun 25, 2012
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Thank you for that because in truth i hadn't even thought of it >.<
The good news is they have been sitting in the computers mostly untouched for years and the one that was used the most i can tell the difference becuase it has the least amount of gb's