Reformat 2 sata HDDs

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dbonniwell

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I have 2 sata Hitachi 160GB drives out on the bench. They were removed and replaced because I was not able to solve a problem with them. I forget what problem. They were running in Raid 1. Mechanically I feel they are just fine.
I definately wish to reformat these drives.
OK plug the power cable and sata cable in to the drives.
Since I am not sure what would happen if they were to once again boot up all the way,
Can I initiate reformat before the system tries to boot up all the way? If so, in easy language, can someone let me know?
Thanks for your help in advance
 
Plug in the SATA hard drive you would like to format, make sure in you BIO's you have the boot priority set to boot from disk (CD, DVD)

Do this by holding down the "delete" key after a reboot untill the BIO's comes up.

Once you set it to CD pop in the windows disk and reboot agian, press any key when promted to boot from CD.

Format like normal and when finished and XP is installed shut down the computer and plug in the second SATA hard drive.

Now boot up again and go into "my computer" depending on how many partitions you gave your first hard drive the second SATA drive should be given a corresponding letter.

For instance you only hve 1 partition you will have 1 "c" drive and your second hard drive will be named "d". If you had 2 partitions you will have a "c" and "d" drive and the second hard drive will be called "e".

Anyway find out which one of those drives is the second hard drive and right click it in "my computer" and select "Format" proceed with formatting if propted, it will remove the data stored on the drive.

If this way does not work go into "disk management" by right clicking my computer and selecting "manage", then select "storage" and then "disk management".

Good luck
 
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