Complete erase help

[mattyboyywonder]

So I am planning to upgrade my rig by doing a lot of things including a new ssd and upgrading to windows 7. I'd like to just wipe my curren hard drive so when i get my new system set up i can easily set which programs go to ssd and which to my hard drive. Can someone tell me or point me towards information on how to basically wipe my hard drive completely clean like i just bought it.

 

[Hawkeye22]

No need to be that drastic. I assume your OS will be on the SSD. Don't install any drives in the system except the one you will install the OS onto. Install your OS. Afterwards, connect your current drive. Go to start/computer. Right click your old drive and select "format". Now you are ready to start putting new files on to that drive.

You can also perform the format from "disk management". Right click on "computer" and select "manage". Disk management will be in the left pane.

 

[mattyboyywonder]

formatting will erase the os and all the other stuff off the old hard drive? So the only difference is formatting i might me able to recall data but somehting like dban it will be gone forever?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Formatting will clear the file system on that partition. At this point if you do nothing else, you have a good chance of recovering data. Once you start installing software amd moving files onto it, recovery becomes harder.

DBAN writes to every sector on the hard drive destroying any data that was previously there. Recovery would be next to impossible.