How to erase data on secondary drive

[Thelillypad123]

The scenario is sort of simple: 

I just recently did a motherboard swap and I thought instead of trying to uninstall/reinstall drivers, I will just reinstall windows on my 120 gb ssd since that is the only thing on it and I chose to keep nothing during that process, so I know that that ssd is just a clean and fresh windows install and nothing else. 

 

However, my 1 TB caviar blue was my games drive, and I really just want to clear all my programs and games completely from that drive and reinstall all of them from scratch. This was an easy process for the ssd because windows setup cleared that drive, but how do I clear my HDD so that I can have a blank drive ready to have all my games/programs reinstalled on it completely new?

 

please let me know if this makes sense. I'm just confused as to how to clear a secondary non-os drive.

[AncestralColt]

Just right click the drive in my computer and choose format drive.

[Thelillypad123]

1 minute ago, AncestralColt said:

Just right click the drive in my computer and choose format drive.

So that will give me an option to completely erase all data on it? Because, I think it still has remnants of a really old windows install from before my ssd lol.

[AncestralColt]

Formatting a drive removes everything. There will be nothing on it, it will be like new.

[RadiatingLight]

2 minutes ago, AncestralColt said:

Just right click the drive in my computer and choose format drive.

This works perfectly, and erases all data on the drive. keep in mind however that this is not a secure way of erasing the drive, and a format is NOT what you should use if you are planning on throwing away or donating the drive. for personal use, a format is what you should do

[Thelillypad123]

1 minute ago, RadiatingLight said:

This works perfectly, and erases all data on the drive. keep in mind however that this is not a secure way of erasing the drive, and a format is NOT what you should use if you are planning on throwing away or donating the drive. for personal use, a format is what you should do

Oh there is nothing personal on the drive, just making sure nothing that used to be on it will effect what is running on my ssd and new programs/games installed on it.

[AncestralColt]

7 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

This works perfectly, and erases all data on the drive. keep in mind however that this is not a secure way of erasing the drive, and a format is NOT what you should use if you are planning on throwing away or donating the drive. for personal use, a format is what you should do

He wanted to reinstall all his games etc on it so no need to completely wipe everything.

[RadiatingLight]

Just now, AncestralColt said:

Formatting a drive removes everything. There will be nothing on it, it will be like new.

Well, it depends.

If a single drive has multiple partitions, (as would have happened with a windows install from a long time ago) the format would only erase one single partition. (the one that was selected) I suggest going into the Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions utility (should come up when you search) and checking that the drive doesn't have more than one partition. if it does, I would suggest going partition by partition and formatting them all.

[RadiatingLight]

1 minute ago, AncestralColt said:

He wanted to reinstall all his games etc on it so no need to completely wipe everything.

I know. I just didn't want OP to go about thinking that a format is the solution for everything, and then use it when donating or giving away a drive.

[AncestralColt]

9 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

I know. I just didn't want OP to go about thinking that a format is the solution for everything, and then use it when donating or giving away a drive.

Well Partitions would probably never be created automatically since it never had an OS installed on it. I know that drives with a Windows OS installed on them have either a hidden partition or shown partition on them but I am pretty sure that regular mass storage drives without an OS have no use of that.

[RadiatingLight]

6 minutes ago, AncestralColt said:

it never had an OS installed on it

 

14 minutes ago, Thelillypad123 said:

I think it still has remnants of a really old windows install from before my ssd lol.

 

[AncestralColt]

LOL I didn't notice