Can I "recycle" stock OEM hard drives?

[BinaryWho]

Not to confuse you with legitimately recycling them, But is there a way I can use my HDD in other computers? In my older computer there was a 320GB HDD, but when I tried to wipe it clean and put Windows on the drive it wouldn't let me. It wasn't through the disk though, It was through a factory reset. That leads me to another question, can I burn a copy of windows onto a cd/dvd and see if that works?

[MoonlightSylv]

Not to confuse you with legitimately recycling them, But is there a way I can use my HDD in other computers? In my older computer there was a 320GB HDD, but when I tried to wipe it clean and put Windows on the drive it wouldn't let me. It wasn't through the disk though, It was through a factory reset. That leads me to another question, can I burn a copy of windows onto a cd/dvd and see if that works?

Yeah I have 2 laptop HDDs in my PC... lol I'm poor...

[WhackingCheese]

Yes? It's physical hardware with standard interfaces you should be able to use it for whatever you want.

[Sack]

Not to confuse you with legitimately recycling them, But is there a way I can use my HDD in other computers? In my older computer there was a 320GB HDD, but when I tried to wipe it clean and put Windows on the drive it wouldn't let me. It wasn't through the disk though, It was through a factory reset. That leads me to another question, can I burn a copy of windows onto a cd/dvd and see if that works?

If you're doing a factory reset on a laptop, and you've put something new into it, then you will most likely run into some troubles. If you remove the drive and put it into another laptop or desktop, format it and put a clean install of windows, then there shouldn't be any trouble.

[BinaryWho]

Okay, so if i take my hdd and put that in my new computer, with a fresh windows, everything should work? Is there anyway I can burn a windows 10 ISO file and use that?

[LAwLz]

Yes it should be possible. It won't work with a factory reset though since that will have all the junk from the OEM still on it. What you need to do is get a Windows installation medium (like a DVD or USB memory stick or something) and then install it from there.
It is hard to explain the exact steps of doing that though since it will be different depending on if you use a DVD or USB memory stick, and which OS you want and so on.
 
TL;DR: Yes it should work. You just need to install Windows from scratch, not do a factory reset.
 
 
 

Okay, so if i take my hdd and put that in my new computer, with a fresh windows, everything should work? Is there anyway I can burn a windows 10 ISO file and use that?

Do you have the Windows 10 ISO already? If you do then just follow this guide.

Just swap out Ubuntu in step 1 for Windows 10, and ignore step 6 and later.

 

The USB memory stick will need to be at least 8GB.

[crystal6tak]

Not to confuse you with legitimately recycling them, But is there a way I can use my HDD in other computers? In my older computer there was a 320GB HDD, but when I tried to wipe it clean and put Windows on the drive it wouldn't let me. It wasn't through the disk though, It was through a factory reset. That leads me to another question, can I burn a copy of windows onto a cd/dvd and see if that works?

Yes, a hard drive is a hard drive, it'll work like any other hard drive.

 

What I would check is what interface it's using, it's either using SATA of the sort, or IDE (for older computers). If it's IDE, you'll have to purchase an IDE to SATA converter to use the HDD on modern computers.

 

And you're going to have to be more clear on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to wipe the drive while running the OS in the drive (So basically, it's the C drive)? No it can't commit seppuku I'm sorry. You're going to either connect the HDD to another computer as a non-C drive or create a bootable OS on a DVD or USB with formatting tool to format the HDD. Tell us what you're trying to do and we can get into detail on how to do each method.

[manikyath]

in 99% of cases it should be perfectly fine.

 

the only bad case i've had was a first gen WD green (the very unreliable ones) that refused to format as anything other than NTFS.

[BinaryWho]

Yes, a hard drive is a hard drive, it'll work like any other hard drive.

 

What I would check is what interface it's using, it's either using SATA of the sort, or IDE (for older computers). If it's IDE, you'll have to purchase an IDE to SATA converter to use the HDD on modern computers.

 

And you're going to have to be more clear on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to wipe the drive while running the OS in the drive (So basically, it's the C drive)? No it can't commit seppuku I'm sorry. You're going to either connect the HDD to another computer as a non-C drive or create a bootable OS on a DVD or USB with formatting tool to format the HDD. Tell us what you're trying to do and we can get into detail on how to do each method.

I would like to pop this 1TB HDD into someones desktop, then wipe it clean. After I would like to pop it into my new PC that I'm hopefully getting and install Windows 10 on it. However I dont wanna buy windows 10, could I use an ISO image instead through the Microsoft website?

[NinjaJc01]

The ISO will still need a license key. If you don't have a windows 10 license, the ISO is useless.

 

I would like to pop this 1TB HDD into someones desktop, then wipe it clean. After I would like to pop it into my new PC that I'm hopefully getting and install Windows 10 on it. However I dont wanna buy windows 10, could I use an ISO image instead through the Microsoft website?

[crystal6tak]

I would like to pop this 1TB HDD into someones desktop, then wipe it clean. After I would like to pop it into my new PC that I'm hopefully getting and install Windows 10 on it. However I dont wanna buy windows 10, could I use an ISO image instead through the Microsoft website?

Go here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-10-enterprise to download a trial version.

 

You don't need to use someone else's desktop to wipe the HDD clean, you can do that when you're installing Windows 10.

 

I have not used the trail verison before, so I don't know what type of file you download. So tell us what file you get then we'll tell you what to do.

[BinaryWho]

The ISO will still need a license key. If you don't have a windows 10 license, the ISO is useless.

Quick backstory, When I tried to do this before, I remember coding something that allowed me to find the product key back when I had windows 7. I then upgraded to Windows 10, reran the script and it seemed the product key changed, do you think I could use this product key?

[NinjaJc01]

You could use the new key, but not the old key.

 

Quick backstory, When I tried to do this before, I remember coding something that allowed me to find the product key back when I had windows 7. I then upgraded to Windows 10, reran the script and it seemed the product key changed, do you think I could use this product key?

[BinaryWho]

I have an idea! *spongebob voice*

There's a place on Reddit where you can actually purchase keys for very cheap. If I just burn an ISO onto a cd and buy a key from that place on Reddit? Would that work?