[countrydude]

Hello,
Since these Hard drives are just laying on a shelf, do I need to take mine out of my pc and install the old one to check all info before removing as there are pictures on one of them that I wish to save,or whats the best way to power them to view?? and these are not small hard-drives ,some 750gb etc, what is recommended ??
What is the best way to remove a windows OS that was previously in use , and I have upgraded,so it a waste of space if I can remove the old one
Thanks guys
Lyn

[LincolnSpector]

countrydude, on 15 January 2011 - 06:34 PM, said:

Hello,
Since these Hard drives are just laying on a shelf, do I need to take mine out of my pc and install the old one to check all info before removing as there are pictures on one of them that I wish to save,or whats the best way to power them to view?? and these are not small hard-drives ,some 750gb etc, what is recommended ??
What is the best way to remove a windows OS that was previously in use , and I have upgraded,so it a waste of space if I can remove the old one
Thanks guys
Lyn

Hi, Countrydude and welcome to the forum.

I'm a little unclear about your question. I'm guessing that you've got some internal hard drives sitting on a shelf, and you want to make sure there's nothing valuable on them before you get rid of them. Is that correct?

I recommend you spend about $20 on a Bytecc USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA adapter kit. It lets you treat an internal drive as an external one that you can plug into your PC's USB port. It's cheap, simple, and it works.

Lincoln

[rgreen4]

You can also temporarily connect the drive to the mother board with a spare SATA cable and finding an unused power connector on the wiring loom. You need to be careful to lay the bare bottom on a mouse pad or some insulating material so as to not fry the electronics of the drive (and computer). You can run the computer with the side panel off and the drive connected this way if you are careful. If you do not have a spare SATA connector and power connection, you can temporarily disconnect the DVD drive and use those connections since you won't be needing the DVD drive at this time.

[smax013]

rgreen4, on 18 January 2011 - 02:35 PM, said:

You can also temporarily connect the drive to the mother board with a spare SATA cable and finding an unused power connector on the wiring loom. You need to be careful to lay the bare bottom on a mouse pad or some insulating material so as to not fry the electronics of the drive (and computer). You can run the computer with the side panel off and the drive connected this way if you are careful. If you do not have a spare SATA connector and power connection, you can temporarily disconnect the DVD drive and use those connections since you won't be needing the DVD drive at this time.

You are assuming that they are all SATA drives. While it seems likely that some are SATA (the original poster mentioned a 750 GB drive...I believe IDE drives maxed out at 500 GB), it is possible that some are IDE drives.

[rgreen4]

True, but then since the original question was so vague, rather than cover the litany of possibilities, I settled on SATA and mentioned SATA in the response. If the member was not sure, or if they had PATA, then they would probably respond back. Of course the same process works for PATA drives as well, disconnecting the molex and ribbon cable from the DVD and connecting to the hard drive. Given that manufactured PC's for the last decade have used the 80 ribbon IDE cable that automatically selects, master/slave on those devices I won't expand on them.

[Allnsmth]

Hi,
You can use Active@ KillDisk it's access hardware directly and erase data using several methods. For example, in US DoD 5220.22-M method etc..!

This post has been edited by coastie65: 10 February 2011 - 06:41 AM