Old hard drive help needed

Malk101 · 22 Nov 2011 at 16:01

Hi, this may seem like a really stupid question, but..

I have an old sata hard drive i wish to pass on to a friend, but it has lots of stuff still on it, OS ect..

Can i just plug it into a spare sata slot on my new pc (already has a HD with windows 7 on) and format from windows.

Was not sure if it would mess up anything, thanks.

Reality Bites · 22 Nov 2011 at 16:07

yes, you can. Just make sure your PC doesn't decide it wants to book from the 'old' drive. if it does, specify your 'new' one in the bios as the main boot drive

wonko · 22 Nov 2011 at 18:16

To be sure that your stuff can't be retrieved then zero-fill it or run something like DBAN. Be careful to wipe the right drive

Malk101 · 22 Nov 2011 at 18:31

Thanks guys, thats sounds easy enough