Formatting old system drive

foreright · 7 Apr 2014 at 17:52

Bear with me guys if I ask a couple of dumb questions.
After building new machine with only SSD in situ for the OS. I intend putting in 2 HDD's from old PC.
One had music and data and poses me no problems. But the other one had my OS and programs on it. Firstly on installing it. Will boot up ignore old OS on it. Secondly how can I format it to rid anything they may remain in the bowels of the HD.
Can you also tell me if by default all programs and documents will install and save in the SSD and if so what will store on the newly formatted HDD.
Hope you understand what I'm waffling on about and can help me - Cheers.

wazza300 · 7 Apr 2014 at 18:00

it will ignore old install if you set the ssd as first boot device after connecting all the drives

then you can format the old install,to install programs to the newly formatted hdd then create a folder on it and point the installer to "custom install"on the hdd instead of the ssd

foreright · 7 Apr 2014 at 18:10

Does a basic format purge the old HD of all data or do I need a third party utility to deep clean (so to speak)
Is there any disadvantage to installing programs to HDD so as to keep the SSD exclusively for OS etc.

wazza300 · 7 Apr 2014 at 18:19

basic format will be ok if your keeping the drive,full format if selling

only disadvantage is slightly slower load times compared to ssd,with the os on the ssd you've improved most slow loading stuff

foreright · 7 Apr 2014 at 18:28

Thanks for your time wazza. One last question is "basic" what I would know as "quick" and how do you acheive a "full" format. Is the utility with Windows sufficient?
Sorry another one. You say make a folder to install programs on HDD, would that have to be called "Program Files"

wazza300 · 7 Apr 2014 at 18:34

yh windows utility is fine,win7/8 it should give you an option for full format

and no you can call it whatever,the title of your game or program ect