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i have a maxtor 80 gb hard drive that was completly erased of all data using a military type erasing program.
this drive worked good before it was erased.
how can i get this drive to accept my windows 2000 xp program.
i am new to computers and any help you can give me would be great.
thanks mbn

Hey MBN,

If I understand correctly, it is like you just got the hard drive direct from the factory with no information on it. If you intend to use this a second drive in your existing PC, just put it in so your computer can recognize it (Please post identifying if it is IDE or SATA and what other drives you have already in your computer for help configuring it to be recognized). Once it is recognized by your BIOS settings, you simply click on it from windows and it will indicate that it is not formatted you give you options to format it. As long as you are sure you are accessing that drive and not your primary drive go ahead go ahead and push through any warnings that tells you it will erase any data on it. If you are planning to replace your current drive, both drives need to be installed and configured to make this happen as well (again post back for help with this) you will need a disk cloning program, I use a program from Acronis TrueImage for such tasks http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage. I know Symantec also has a solution as well as many others, just google "clone hard drive". Lastly, if you are simply setting it up as a new drive, just put your Windows CD disk in and let it fly.

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