Reusing a few hard drives from old Sky+ boxes?

Access · 05-12-2012 03:40PM #1

A simple question...

How would i go about wiping a few old 160gb hard drives from some old sky boxes for reuse with a windows pc?

I am running Win 7 and have a usb enclosure to put them in to format them but need to wipe them first as they have at least 4 partitions and i cant get windows to delete the partitions.

Thanks.

Beez · 05-12-2012 03:57PM

Access wrote: »

A simple question...

How would i go about wiping a few old 160gb hard drives from some old sky boxes for reuse with a windows pc?

I am running Win 7 and have a usb enclosure to put them in to format them but need to wipe them first as they have at least 4 partitions and i cant get windows to delete the partitions.

Thanks.

Some partitioning software would do it like Partition Magic. They usually need to be booted from rarther than installed from Windows.

bonzodog2 · 05-12-2012 04:24PM

You could use http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/download.html, possibly booting from a USB stick if your PC allows this. At a command prompt, use fdisk. Make sure you don't wipe the Win7 installation !

[edit] or any other live Linux, DSl is very small.
[edit] having looked at the site, you might find another easier.....

Bosh · 05-12-2012 05:45PM

This works too - Easus

GreenWolfe · 05-12-2012 05:57PM

GParted Live CD - you'll be able to partition the drives graphically.

Access · 05-12-2012 07:47PM

Thanks for the tips but, not looking to partition the drives at all... i just want to wipe them back to new - no partitions at all and then just format back to NTFS or FAT for use in some pc or usb enclosure as a handy external hard drive.

GreenWolfe · 05-12-2012 07:56PM

Access wrote: »

Thanks for the tips but, not looking to partition the drives at all... i just want to wipe them back to new - no partitions at all and then just format back to NTFS or FAT for use in some pc or usb enclosure as a handy external hard drive.

After you wipe them (with Darik's Boot and Nuke to name one example) they'll need to be formatted and partitioned, even if there's only to be one partition on the disk. After the wipe you could do this in Windows or with a LiveCD, whichever you prefer.

EDIT: Ultimate Boot CD has a lot of these utilities on one disc (including DBAN), it's worth taking a look at.

The_Thing · 05-12-2012 08:41PM

Any of these Sky boxes I've opened up have had the older PATA type drives in them. Is your USB enclosure PATA or SATA?

Access · 05-12-2012 08:44PM

Yeah, they are pata... but its a spare pata pc and a spare pata enclosure i have so no problems there.

Beez · 07-12-2012 04:57PM

Access wrote: »

Thanks for the tips but, not looking to partition the drives at all... i just want to wipe them back to new - no partitions at all and then just format back to NTFS or FAT for use in some pc or usb enclosure as a handy external hard drive.

But these programs will probably allow you to delete any partitions on the drive allowing Windows to be installed on it

Access · 07-12-2012 09:09PM

Sorted!

Thanks to all for the tips... i ended up using Danks boot and nuke on an old spare pc with each drive connected each time... (easiest method for me) and then I formatted them after they were attached to a usb caddy. Drives are all NTFS now and working perfect as occasional backup drives.

One downside was that it took well over 3 hours for danks to erase the drives (160GB drives)

But dont mind as all sorted now.

Thanks again all.

07-12-2012 09:15PM

The clean command in diskpart should have worked too. No third party software needed.

Reusing a few hard drives from old Sky+ boxes?

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