Hard drive question

BallzBeeDragon

Honorable
Feb 9, 2013
15
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10,510
Okay so I have a problem, I just helped my friend build a computer over text lol. But here is the problem.
He previously had a couple of Seagate hard drives from his dad's computer, The only thing is he couldn't get into the system to reformat them.
So I just built my computer a few weeks ago, and i'm wondering. I'f I put his hard drives in my computer, with his dads bios and everything saved onto it. Would I be able to access i't and reformat, without it ruining anything from my bios or system?

We don't want to save anything from the harddrives, just a clean wipe.
 
Solution
The BIOS is physically on the motherboard. You are more worried about drivers for that chipset that are installed and load while booting from that drive. Add your friends hard drives as additional drives to your PC (so you are still booting normally). After that simply format the drives in Windows. ...or slap the drives in an external case (USB or eSATA), then format as you please.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007705%20600006254%20600006260&IsNodeId=1&Description=external%20hard%20drive%20case&name=Yes&Order=BESTMATCH

The OS license is tied to the hardware and in this case (only changing the HD) the previous license should be fine. You should be fine to re-use that key.

BallzBeeDragon

Honorable
Feb 9, 2013
15
0
10,510
I tried to explain to him, that you couldn't boot from another hard drive OS, without having basically the same chipset's and setup.
But he tried it anyways, and of course. I't didn't work lol.
So now he has to buy another copy of the OS, i'm just not sure i'f he goes to install the OS, will it overwrite everything on the previous harddrives.
Or just write ontop of them?
 
The BIOS is physically on the motherboard. You are more worried about drivers for that chipset that are installed and load while booting from that drive. Add your friends hard drives as additional drives to your PC (so you are still booting normally). After that simply format the drives in Windows. ...or slap the drives in an external case (USB or eSATA), then format as you please.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007705%20600006254%20600006260&IsNodeId=1&Description=external%20hard%20drive%20case&name=Yes&Order=BESTMATCH

The OS license is tied to the hardware and in this case (only changing the HD) the previous license should be fine. You should be fine to re-use that key.
 
Solution

BallzBeeDragon

Honorable
Feb 9, 2013
15
0
10,510


Yes that would have worked fine, only thing is I didn't trust the hard drives to put them into my brand new rig.
But I ended up finding out the problem. I't wasn't his hard drives. I't was the DvD drive, I guess that it was so old. I't couldn't read windows 8. Because the drive was manufactured in like 2002.
We ended up getting him a new dvd drive. and it worked perfect.