Do I need to format this HD

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

One of our PCs has a 160 GB HD that is quickly filling up with music and pictures. I have an 80 GB from my dad's PC that was recently replaced with a 1 TB drive. I am wondering if I will have to reformat the drive to use it for storage in the other PC? They are both running Windows XP (I think SP3 is on both). There are some files on the 80 GB we would like to keep so I don't want to reformat if I don't have to.

Thanks in advance!

 

[brinks]

You can always transfer the files you need from the 80GB drive to another drive, then transfer it back after formatting it.

Also a format is not needed if your using the 80GB as a storage drive, it will read fine on another computer. It's just that if the 80GB has an OS on it, there will be alot of junk files that should be removed. By doing a format it will get the drive nice and clean.

 

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

Yeah the 80 GB had an OS on it , so do you think I could get all of that stuff off myself without formatting or would there still be hidden files and the like? I thought about doing like you said, transfer the files to the 160 Gb temporaily(sp?) and then moving them back but I am not sure if I would be able to because there is only 40 GB free on the 160 and my dad had only a couple GB of space left on the 80.

Well I just talked to my dad and he said he has all the files he needs off of the drive so I can go ahead and just reformat it. Should I use Windows to format it or is there another program that is better? I have GParted I think but I have no idea how to use it.

 

[Peter.Cort]

use gparted, MindoverMaster has a link in his sig to a gparted guide. and yeah you'll want to reformat it, otherwise there will be a conflict of OS's when you boot and it might boot the 80gb over the 160gb (depending on a few factors) so you're better of to just blow it away.

 

[MindoverMaster]

You rang?

 

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

So how many partitions would I need to make and how big should I make them. The maximum size or what? I will probably do this tomorrow or possibly today if it won't take very long. Does it take a while to do a whole drive (with the correct number and size of partitions)?

EDIT: I was just reading the GParted guide and saw that you can just reformat the existing partitions as fat16, fat32 and so on. Would this be what I should do? And which format should I use?

 

[Peter.Cort]

just make 1 partition that takes up the whole drive, no need to do anything else. and it'll take like 10-15 minutes max. no need to do a super high level format on it.

 

[MindoverMaster]

It takes less than 15 minutes with GParted. make partitions as you like. It is recommended to make the OS partition at least 50GB.

 

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

Well I am not going to make an OS partition because this drive will just be for storing music and possibly pictures and movies. Should I use the NTFS format or which one?

 

[Peter.Cort]

ntfs = windows, fat32 = linux.