Old hard drive format or defrag?

[Chris_961]

Dear all

I'm going to be performing an upgrade for someone this weekend.

I'm reinstalling Windows 10 on an SSD for them and we will be repurposing the old HDD as a mass storage drive for his music, pictures and movies e.c.t.

Since the drive has a backup of their current media (and the old Windows 7 install) on it should I just delete what isn't needed and defrag it once windows 10 is installed and running?

Or should I just copy the media files to another storage device and format the HDD during windows setup and then move the files back?

 

[USAFRet]

Dear all

I'm going to be performing an upgrade for someone this weekend.

I'm reinstalling Windows 10 on an SSD for them and we will be repurposing the old HDD as a mass storage drive for his music, pictures and movies e.c.t.

Since the drive has a backup of their current media (and the old Windows 7 install) on it should I just delete what isn't needed and defrag it once windows 10 is installed and running?

Or should I just copy the media files to another storage device and format the HDD during windows setup and then move the files back?

Whatever they need off the old drive...copy it elsewhere.
Later, reconnect the HDD, wipe it completely, and copy that stuff back

 

[Barty1884]

Really depends on how much 'bulk' storage is on there.

A defrag isn't going to fully remove the old Windows install - there's really no way to do that shy of backing up data and formatting the drive.

There's no harm really in having W7 installed on secondary storage, but formatting and only having the bulk media on there would free up some space (how much, will depend on the size of the install).

 

[Chris_961]

@USAFRet and @Barty1884

The reason I was asking is because this hard drive has started to re allocate sector's.

So I wanted to know if defragmenting it after installing windows 10 and then deleting the unnecessary partitions, (then copying their media back to it) ...

would be better or worse than...

Deleting all of the old partitions and then copying the data back to it.

 

[USAFRet]

Ah...its already starting to go bad.
Copy the critical stuff off it now.

Either of your A or B above won't "fix it". Only delay (or speed up) the inevitable.
And then just replace it.

 

[Barty1884]

If the HDD is re-allocating sectors, I'd look to replace it sooner than later - rather than worrying about defragmenting, or formatting.

If there's data on there you can't afford to lose.... make sure you back it up.