Erasing Data Off A Hard Drive From Another Computer

by on January 18, 2008

Q: How can I erase a hard drive that came with another desktop so that I can now use it in my computer for storage only? The hard drive in question has Windows installed on it but I now want to move it into the my computer and use it just for storage.

A: There are a few ways you can do this and both of them require that you install the hard drive in the computer. To do this is a little outside of this answer but you will have to open up your computer and make sure that your new drive, if it has jumpers, has the jumpers set correctly for how you are connecting it.

Once the hard drive is connected you will have access to everything on the hard drive. The first way of deleting the data is no different than how you would delete data on your existing hard drive. To do this you can go to My Computer and you can either get there by going to Start -> My Computer or if you have an older version of Windows then My Computer should be right on your desktop.

From here you will want to look for the heading that says Hard Disk Drives and you should see a Local Disk (C:) and a Local Disk (D:). You want to make sure NOT to touch C:. You will want to right click on Local Disk (D:) and select Format… and you probably want to make sure that the Quick Format option is checked off, as it will run much faster and it will do the job for what you are doing.

One Response to “Erasing Data Off A Hard Drive From Another Computer”

    You can wipe the data using format command or format the hard drive by right clicking the drive>select format. But it doesn’t wipe data permanently. For permanent deletion, use stellar Drive Wipe a powerful and robust drive wipe software that completely wipes hard drive data using advanced data wiping algorithms.