Formatting a used hard drive

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RoloFanatic

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Dec 4, 2013
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Hi,

Im running out of space to store stuff in my desktop PC. So i found my old laptop, it has a 640Gb Western Digital Hard drive.

What i want to do is install this into my desktop as well as the current hard drive, but my laptop hard drive has windows 7 installed on it (so does my desktop). Is this a problem? Will anything freaky happen? Or do i just plug it in and format it as you would a new hard drive?

(By the way, the hard drive is the WD6400BPVT if that matters)
Thanks
 
Solution
geofelt
Just plug it in, making certain that your boot order does not point to it.
You can then delete all the partitions and use it as a regular drive.
But... be forewarned laptop drives optimize for power savings not speed. It is likely 5400 rpm and will power down when not in use. It will be slow.
Past that, and perhaps a 2.5" mounting issue, you should be ok.
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notherdude

notherdude

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Jul 18, 2006
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Sure, if you don't want the old windows install or anything else just hook up the drive and it should be detected and installed automatically, then you can simply delete the old windows, it will already be formatted but you can reformat it if you want to wipe it clean.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

Titan
Oct 9, 2006
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Just plug it in, making certain that your boot order does not point to it.
You can then delete all the partitions and use it as a regular drive.
But... be forewarned laptop drives optimize for power savings not speed. It is likely 5400 rpm and will power down when not in use. It will be slow.
Past that, and perhaps a 2.5" mounting issue, you should be ok.
 
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