Deleting Files on Previous Hard Drives

[triface1]

Hi everyone. I apologize if this is not the category to ask this in, but I wasn't sure whether to put my question here or in Vista. Hell, I don't even know whether this place is the correct place to ask this question, but I decided to take a shot since I frequent the site.

Two days ago, my motherboard bit the dust, and upon the recommendation of the tech whom I worked with, replaced my:
■motherboard
■RAM
■PSU

I also got a new 1TB hard drive while preserving my previous two hard drives which added up to 500GB, keeping them as slaves.

I installed Windows 7 Home Premium (my previous OS was Vista), and everything is working fine. However, I would like to clear out the stuff in my previous hard drives because a large portion of the files in the "Program Files" folder is not usable any more, seeing as a large portion of them requires the corresponding registry keys to work (due to a fresh OS install).

My question is this: Do I have to follow any specific procedures when removing these files, or can I just delete them? I don't see how it can cause any harm to my registry since all the keys in the registry for the old files are no longer there.

I don't think my computer's specifications are important, but I will gladly provide them if necessary.

 

[dodger46]

See no reason why you can't just format them from 'Computer' as long as you've transferred anything you want to keep to your new drive. As you say, all you need to run Windows is on your new one! You'll have to re-install any other software of course...

 

[photonboy]

I agree.

1) copy anything you might need
2) run a FULL format (NTFS) on the drive

A FULL format not only wipes the data and rebuilds the FAT table, but it also does write/reads on each location and builds a BAD SECTOR table which is why it takes so long. If you do NOT do a full format you could conceivably write data to an area which is now defective.