How do I erase an external hard drive?

I found programs to erase internal hard drives but I do not have a floppy to boot from. The drive use to be my notebooks internal drive so I want to make sure it is clean of everything.

 

You could right click on it and select 'format'.

 

If this is your primary dirve then you could use your Windows XP CD to format as part of a new install. If you are looking to install another OS (Linux perhaps) the installation will offer a format option.

You could also create a bootable CD and put the tools on reqguired (google for bootle cd's ) . Some of the BIOS use to offer a low level format option as well - I have not looked for that feature for a while.

If you have more than one computer and you are networked - and you are runing Widows you could connect to the root of the drive you want to format ( hidden share for all Widows machines (c$ or d$) then format the networked drive from the main computer.

Always ways to destroy data

 

when the drive is connected to the computer go to
Start/Settings/Control pannle/Administrative tools/Computer Management; on the left there is a menu and in the menu goto Storage/Disk Management, then select the disk in the visual display thing by right clicking it and select delete partition or format. Delete partition will make the drive/partion unformated (therefor it will have no data) and it will have to be re formated or you can re format the drive to a format and size of your choosing.
i hoped that helped.

ps. the control pannle and start menu will have to be in classic style for those directions to work.

 

REDFROG- THANK YOU! That worked great!!!!!

 

Thats ok any time