Can I use my 4TB SSD again?

[Ksalmon]

I built a new PC at the beginning of this year. A couple months into playing on the pc I ran into a boot drive issue. I was using a 1TB Samsung M.2 as my boot drive and I had a 4TB Samsung SSD as additional storage. One day my boot drive "died". I switched my boot drive to a different M.2 port and my computer continued to run, although, it gave me blue screens and game launching/running issues. I tried some storage repair methods with no success.

 

After a bit I decided to buy a new 2TB SSD and remove both of my old drives. I put the new 2TB in as my only drive and redownloaded windows on that. Everything has been great so far however I was wondering if I can put my 4TB SSD back in to use even though it has various games and software downloaded on it currently. There is nothing on the 4TB that needs to be saved, I would be fine with wiping the drive as long as I can continue to use it for more storage space. If I am able to continue to use the drive, what would the procedure be to safely wipe and continue using the drive be?

 

Note: I will not be using the M.2 drive again as that was the drive that was causing all of the corruption issues.

 

Specs:

CPU - i9-14900K

GPU - Asus Strix 4080

MOBO - Asus Strix Z790-A Gamming Wifi II

Cooler - NZXT Kraken 360

2TB SSD - Samsung 870 EVO SSD

4TB SSD - Samsung 870 EVO SSD

RAM - Corsair Vengeance RGB 2X32GB DDR5-6000

PSU - Corsair RM1000E

Case - Lianli O11D EVO RGB

Fans - Lianli 3xTL LCD 120, 4xTL 120

OS - Windows 11

 

 

[Needfuldoer]

I don't see why not.

[Godlygamer23]

Of course you can use it again. When reinstalling it back into the system, I would double check the BIOS/UEFI to ensure your current boot drive stays like that(just a matter of switching it around). You shouldn't have any problems. In its current state, it should be fine, but depends on what specific games and programs you have installed on it. If they're Steam/Epic/uPlay/Origin games, you could leave them there as-is, and just essentially re-add them to your library. Otherwise, you might have some issues. Any programs installed could continue to work, even on a different Windows installation.

[Ksalmon]

53 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Of course you can use it again. When reinstalling it back into the system, I would double check the BIOS/UEFI to ensure your current boot drive stays like that(just a matter of switching it around). You shouldn't have any problems. In its current state, it should be fine, but depends on what specific games and programs you have installed on it. If they're Steam/Epic/uPlay/Origin games, you could leave them there as-is, and just essentially re-add them to your library. Otherwise, you might have some issues. Any programs installed could continue to work, even on a different Windows installation.

I believe that it is basically only steam games and Blizzard games installed on the old 4TB. Although, I think some of the games that are installed on the 4TB are now also installed on my new 2TB that I am currently using. What should be done to clean wipe my 4TB when I plug it in?

[Godlygamer23]

1 hour ago, Ksalmon said:

I believe that it is basically only steam games and Blizzard games installed on the old 4TB. Although, I think some of the games that are installed on the 4TB are now also installed on my new 2TB that I am currently using. What should be done to clean wipe my 4TB when I plug it in?

Formatting it and maybe running TRIM(Optimize Drives in Windows) should be sufficient.