Advice on formatting older drives

Fanaticjam · 30 Nov 2012 at 21:52

Hey all,

I have 2 HDD's that have been replaced with new drives and I want to reuse these.

One is a 2TB which will be put in an external caddy for backing up. Not too old, going 2 years maybe.
The other is a lot older, about 5 or 6 years and has been filled multiple times over, a 320GB drive. Planning on using it as a temporary storage in case I run out of room whilst frapps'ing games, so it will be seeing little usage and won't be storing valuable data.

I've never had to do any maintenance with HDD's before apart from installation, was wondering what I need to do and if there is some way to test for errors and that kind of thing? Googling it at the moment, just not having much luck with decent advice!

Swordfish · 30 Nov 2012 at 21:54

Seatools is a good free choice for testing the drives.. I also use HDTune.

d_brennen · 30 Nov 2012 at 21:56

If you are just keeping them a plain old Windows format will do. Programs such as HDTune (trial) can let you see the SMART info of the drive's controller to see if there is errors building up etc. Manufactures usually have their own tools for testing hard drives too, who makes yours?

Fanaticjam · 30 Nov 2012 at 22:08

320GB is seagate. Think the other is samsung, trying to work it out now

d_brennen · 30 Nov 2012 at 22:27

Samsung drives are now covered by Seagate, so Seatools is all you need

Fanaticjam · 30 Nov 2012 at 23:03

Sweet! SO this HDtune worth getting or only if it's paid?

d_brennen · 1 Dec 2012 at 01:39

Wouldn't pay for it for checking 2 drives (though I have a paid license considering how many I look after), there are free alternatives, like Seatools

Fanaticjam · 1 Dec 2012 at 12:59

Sweet, thanks for the link, I'll give it a shot!