How to clear HDD for new build

[Guest]

Well, I have a factory made Dell Inspiron 546 with a nice 500GB HDD. I plan on building a new computer, and seeing that HDD producers are milking the hell out of this flooding thing in Thailand with insane pricing, I'm going to keep my Dell's HDD and use it for the new build.

First off, how would I go about clearing my hard drive and just starting it from new (I don't want most of the crap on it anyways)? It has a factory installed Windows 7, so I'm guessing I can't move that to my new computer and that I'll need to buy a new Win7 OEM for my build?

Also, for clearing my hard drive, is there any certain program I should be using? I heard that just deleting files doesn't work out too well.

 

[inzone]

This could be an option for you , if you bought windows 7 and in your new computer you were to make your dvd drive the first boot option and put the disc in then it would boot from the cd and you could choose to format the hdd before you loaded the OS on it.

 

[Guest]

This could be an option for you , if you bought windows 7 and in your new computer you were to make your dvd drive the first boot option and put the disc in then it would boot from the cd and you could choose to format the hdd before you loaded the OS on it.

what if I didn't take anything off of the hard drive, and tried to boot up my new build with it? I know it wouldn't allow me to use the Win7 on there because of being OEM and stuck to my old MOBO, so would I just use another Win7 disc and re-install?

 

[substrate]

what if I didn't take anything off of the hard drive, and tried to boot up my new build with it? I know it wouldn't allow me to use the Win7 on there because of being OEM and stuck to my old MOBO, so would I just use another Win7 disc and re-install?

Go into your BIOS (usually this is done by pressing DEL or F2 when your computer first starts up -- the bootup screen should tell you what key to press, and just keep hitting it until you see the BIOS screen. You technically only need to press it once but some computers need you to press it at a specific time. Most new computers you can just hit DEL a single time after you see the post screen).

Find your boot settings. You want to set your CD-ROM / DVD drive to be the primary boot device, and the HDD as the secondary boot device.

Save changes and exit your BIOS. This will reboot your computer.

Even though you still have the old Win7 on your HDD, it will attempt to boot from the CD.

Once in the Windows setup, choose to format the disk. If you choose "quick erase" or "quick format" then it will just clear the allocation tables on the drive -- it won't actually reset each bit on the drive. If you choose "full format" or whatever, it will clear the tables and the data on the drive (no chance of recovering the data).

I recommend you only format the first 60 to 80 GB of the drive and create a new partition with that. Install Windows on that partition.

Once the Windows setup is complete, and Windows has started, right-click on My Computer, select "Manage", then expand "Storage" in the tree on the left and click on "Disk Management". At this point you will see a table on the bottom of the window. It should say "Disk 0" and to the right of that will show your partitions. If you only formatted the first 80GB of the drive and created the C: on that, then you will have some "unallocated space". Right-click on the unalllocated space, then click "Format" and create a new NTFS partition on that. This can be your D: drive.

Put all your documents/mp3s/movies/games/etc. on your D: drive and leave the C: drive for Windows and your applications.

If, in the future, you have to re-install Windows then it is simply a matter of formatting your C: drive and re-installing Windows. All your documents/mp3s/movies will be un-touched on your D: drive.

 

[Guest]

Best answer selected by kllrfrk.