I am repacing my harddrive. I have 2 drives.

I need to know if I can reformat the new drive without touching the second drive. Or do I need to take the second drive out , reformat the new one and put it back in. Or, do need to save everything to disk for the reformat.

Thanks for any help that you can give me.

No you don’t need to take out one drive to format the other.

If the new drive is replacing your main “C” drive (with Windows OS on it), the Windows install is only going to format that drive.

If the new drive is going to be your secondary drive “E”, “F”, etc., just right click on that drive letter and format (the “C” drive is unaffected).

 “Or, do need to save everything to disk for the reformat.”…Well if the disk you are formatting has data you don’t want to lose, YES.

SWAMP

Thanks.

How many partitions does the drive being replaced have? If there is more than one, then you will need to either back up the perishable data, or transfer it to the drive you aren't changing. The only other 'whoopsie' would be if you have a RAID 0 array; if that were the case, you can't change one drive without destroying the data striping across both drives, and would need to back up the entire magilla.

hmm...well, it's possible. Most RAID configurations are for servers, but you can get RAID system boards at places that sell computer parts. If you DO go with RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpenxive [HAH!] Drives..;), the various levels of RAID will also require 2 or more drives, depending on the level. But unless you have to have constant access to the information, you probably can slide by on that..;)

The various flavors of Operating systems have ways to format. If it's not the boot (usually C) drive, you can format or repartition to your hearts' content. Just make sure which drive you're working on. You can give them names (C, D, or My Brother George), to make sure. But all the useful info's in the thread above this.

i did the same thing, reformatted a new hard drive with my old drive still in place...i even unplugged the 12v power cable from the drive.

reformatted the new drive then plugged in my old hard drive and went to transfer the goods and guess what...it was all gone! i know i reformatted the correct drive because it was formatted correcrtly...just something went wrong inside.

i would unplug the power and ide cable from your good hard drive and reformat your new drive however you want...and then once it's formatted plug all of your stuff back in and transfer the goods.

if you aren't going to go through all of this trouble i would make cd's of valuable info before you begin the deed...sometimes strange, unexplainable things happen with computer gear...and if you lost info that you could have copied, you will kick yourself.

good luck!

I decided to go the external HHD rout. I will just buy a new computer when this one dyes. It will be time to go 64 bit anyways. I always have everything backed up on disk as zips and .exe. I just didn't want to lose the way i had it loaded in the second drive. 

Thanks for the advice everyone.

i've done this a lot (had millenium you know) and never had that happen.  did you spark the other drive?  did you change the fat table of the c drive so that it couldn't read the other drive? (you would have to step back from ntfs to fat 32 though...but xp will do both...maybe you accidently put fat 32 instead of ntfs)

but mr peabody is right about backing up of course...i never do and i always get smacked by it...i need to do it right now...but what am i doing?...

i just thought it odd that even with no power (12volts) the frickin' drive still formatted...i hates these machines!