Wiping my hard drive

[exia46]

so i want to wipe my hard drive and reinstall my os and start from a blank slate again because i got a lot of clutter i cant seem to just rid of. how do i wipe my hard drive and what all do i need to do besides back up?

 

[darth pravus]

Just backing up is fine. Put in the operating system disc and when it asks which partition to install it to format the drive and then install into that.

 

[manofchalk]

Take the HDD out of the machine, plug it into another and re-formating it would be the easiest way to wipe the drive.
Then put it back in the original machine and install Windows.

Obviously back up what you want to keep on an external/different drive
Make sure you have drivers and such downloaded ahead of time and on a USB or other external drive, that will speed up the process a bit.

 

[gatekeeper_si]

Find a utility called Digiwiz download the image onto a cd
boot off the cd use the hard drive tools to format the hdd ( after backing up any data you want to keep)
re boot with OS cd and install windows again

Si
PS The format within the os install utility doesnt actually wipe your hard drive particulary well so it is better to use another utility to make sure the drive is wiped

 

[exia46]

thanks guys this will help alot. im upgrading my gpu and adding more ram to improve my gaming rig so this will help alot.