[RyanC321]

I have a secondary IDE 160 GB hard drive that is full. I have transferred the data to my new drive. I now want to erase the data off of the old 160 GB drive. I want to make sure it can't be recovered. But, I want to use the hard drive as a backup of my main drive.

I'm not sure what to do to erase the data and get the drive ready for re-use or if I have to buy a program to erase the data so it can't be recovered.

 

[Elvandil]

Use Darik's Boot and Nuke. It will eliminate all traces from the drive.

If you are running XP, after cleaning the drive, right-click My Computer > Manage > Disk Management. Right-click your drive, remove all partitions and logical drives until the drive is completely unallocated. Then, create a partition or partitions, and format as desired. You can also choose what drive letter to assign.

 

[RyanC321]

Thanks!

 

[RyanC321]

I learned that Darik's will erase any hard drive it can detect. I don't want my C: drive erased; just the secondary drive g:.

 

[Elvandil]

If you are given no options when you boot up Darik's (and I think you DO have options), then simply unplug the drive you do not want erased (a good idea, anyway, to avoid catastrophe since the drive letters often are not the same when using external utilities) and then boot up Darik's. Because drive letters change, you need to always use some method other than the drive letter to be sure you are operating on the correct partition or drive, such as size or location. If you have only one drive connected, you needn't worry about that.

 

[bigbear]

A good idea is to uplug the drive you want to keep,
Another software I use is killdisk, which is a low level format and will wipe the drive to how you first purchased it
http://www.killdisk.com/

 

[RyanC321]

Thanks, that should take care of the issue for me.