Deleting operating system from hard drive

[UpLift Aerial]

Hey guys. This may not be the place to ask but I thought someone on here might know.

So recently I noticed that my hard drive was getting full from all my 4K from my P3P, so I thought I'd put another one in that I have laying around, but it has an old operating system on it. I don't want to put it in and the computer get confused. I want to know how I can wipe it clean of all the junk an operating system.

 

[Bakersfield Quad]

You could install the second drive and format it, then it would not be bootable anymore. You will see that when you add a drive, it will add a new drive letter, such as D-E-F ect. The machine is set to boot to C drive, so it should boot to your operating system. There can be issues with Windows, not liking the other operating system and giving you a warning, depending on which Windows you have.
The other thing you could do is add an external drive, a 2 terabyte drive is pretty cheap!
BQ

 

[Fly Dawg]

See the link below. I use this when replacing or re-formatting drives.

Amazon.com: Vantec CB-ISATAU2 SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter Supports 2.5-Inch, 3.5-Inch, 5.25-Inch Hard Disk Drives (Black): Electronics

 

[UpLift Aerial]

Another question is when I have more than 1 drive I can't access the files on it through the "documents", "videos", "pictures" folders etc. I have to go directly to the drive. Is it possible to make it go through the "documents", "videos", "pictures" folders etc. It may not seem like a big deal

 

[Fly Dawg]

If you mean make it go through those folders on a different drive than you are reading from then no, not directly.

 

[Jayfdee]

Format your old drive and install, it should be recognised in the same way as a USB flash drive.
Alternatively just use a removable external hard drive.
Another option,clone your existing hard drive to a much larger drive, keep your old drive as a back up for your OS, big hard drives are cheap these days, and plenty of free cloning software.
Yes 4k is a storage hog.

 

[UpLift Aerial]

How much space dose everyone else have on their computer in total?

 

[UpLift Aerial]

This guys' got alot...

72TB in total. Man would I love to have that!

Instagram post by Gear Candy • Apr 6, 2017 at 6:04pm UTC

 

[Fly Dawg]

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.....Why not just use a private server. Jees oh pete....TMTOHH....

 

[RC_G35x]

That *is* a server (or more accurately a drive array).

My wife runs a wedding photography business so I have a server running Solaris for ZFS with 20-22TB of space on it. Between all 3 PCs we have 55-60TB of space total.

I picked up a 8TB external drive on amazon a week ago for 150$, so their getting pretty dang cheap. If I was doing commercial videos I wouldn't buy just one (you want at minimum to duplicate your data between drives. Triple is even better).

I never have understood the people who trust a single drive with thousands of dollars worth of footage and work. You buy thousands of dollars worth of drone, or tens of thousands worth of cameras and then are not willing to spend a few hundred more to protect from a (reasonably likely) HDD crash?!

Maybe that's just the paranoid IT guy in me though.

 

[RC_G35x]

Oh and to answer the OPs question. If it's windows it should be a pretty easy format job, but best practice would be to go into drive manager and delete all partitions on the drive, then create new ones and format the drive. Then it would be ready for action.

Just double and triple check so you don't delete partitions on the wrong drive!

 

[UpLift Aerial]

That *is* a server (or more accurately a drive array).

My wife runs a wedding photography business so I have a server running Solaris for ZFS with 20-22TB of space on it. Between all 3 PCs we have 55-60TB of space total.

I picked up a 8TB external drive on amazon a week ago for 150$, so their getting pretty dang cheap. If I was doing commercial videos I wouldn't buy just one (you want at minimum to duplicate your data between drives. Triple is even better).

I never have understood the people who trust a single drive with thousands of dollars worth of footage and work. You buy thousands of dollars worth of drone, or tens of thousands worth of cameras and then are not willing to spend a few hundred more to protect from a (reasonably likely) HDD crash?!

Maybe that's just the paranoid IT guy in me though.

Agree! I would rather have multiple "smaller" drives rather than 1 BIG on one. That way, if one fails, I'm only out a TB or so, NOT all at once.

 

[DroneGuyEd]

There are many tools for formatting a hard drive. Windows has one built in. You can mount the drive internally or use a USB->SATA adapter and format externally. I almost always use the USB route and its much faster and doesn't even require a reboot. Once formatted, you can store whatever you want there using it as a second (or additional) drive on your OS.

I use 4 TB RAID drives for all my data (I have more than one). I have about 1 TB of drone data so far and so external backups to a separate external drive about once a month. I backup every thing externally regardless of content.

 

[RC_G35x]

Agree! I would rather have multiple "smaller" drives rather than 1 BIG on one. That way, if one fails, I'm only out a TB or so, NOT all at once.

Your half right. You want multiple drives (size is immaterial) but you want to duplicate the data so you lose nothing, not jist lose "less" of it.

I usually point out to people that drives are super cheap now and there is almost always a "sweet spot" where it makes the most sense to buy. For example I see 4TB drives in the 80-90$ range, and sometimes as big as 8tb in the 150$ range. Anything smaller your going to pay more $/tb.

If you can't afford two 150$ 8tb drives buy 2 80$ 4tb drives, but in either case put the same data on both drives (there are plenty of great, free, software mirroring tools to keep a constant backup between the drives).

Also, RAID is *not* a backup. A single raid array should be thought of as a very large, very resilient single HDD, but not as a safe single location storage for important data. RAIDs are susceptible to "bit loss", user mistakes, and plenty of other issues with a windows based array (as opposed to a ZFS or EMC array for example). Even a basic mirror isn't as safe as a software based solution that copies data between two drives (since you can setup the software solution to not delete or make changes, only copy over new files).

RAIDs have their place, just not as sole backups.

 

[DroneGuyEd]

Also, RAID is *not* a backup. A single raid array should be thought of as a very large, very resilient single HDD, but not as a safe single location storage for important data. RAIDs are susceptible to "bit loss", user mistakes, and plenty of other issues with a windows based array (as opposed to a ZFS or EMC array for example). Even a basic mirror isn't as safe as a software based solution that copies data between two drives (since you can setup the software solution to not delete or make changes, only copy over new files).

RAIDs have their place, just not as sole backups.

RAID systems vary some and can be quite safe...especially high end ones like Western Digital makes. They are a highly reliable primary storage location. While they can also be used as a backup system, a much better choice is separate drives...and better still.. remote storage. A local fire will pretty much ruin all.

I tend to rely on a combination of separate external drives and cloud storage at a remote location. Couple that with local incremental backup systems, and you will rarely ever lose anything.

 

[UpLift Aerial]

I realized the HDD uses the old style hookups.

 

[DroneGuyEd]

I realized the HDD uses the old style hookups.

You can get USB adapters for both the older PATA drives as well as the newer SATA drives.

 

[UpLift Aerial]

You can get USB adapters for both the older PATA drives as well as the newer SATA drives.

Oh, ok. I'll see what I can do. Thanks

 

[BlackBeard8654]

You can map the locations on your alternate drives as you would a network drive. Basically this means make a shortcut to the file path/directory where you want to access it quickly. If you need further help lmk and I can do it for you through TeamViewer or something.