deleting hard drive

Another effective way plus having a drive partitioning tool onhand free of charge except for the price of a single cd-r blank is the GParted live cd(short for Gnome Partition Editor). I regularly nuke partitions here to see a fresh install of one OS or another for custom multiboots of XP/Vista/7 beta and even a Linux distro at times where that takes care of everything once you get familiar with it.

For software tools the Active Killdisk Atomic Rooster pointed out as well as other security tools that write binary zeros to drives used commonly by businesses will nuke any drive clean fast as well. Some however will take quite a bit of time depending on the size of the drive involved since those repeat the process several times to insure no recovery is possible later.
 
1. You can use your OS install CD. Boot to the CD and just go through the motions to get to the point where you can delete and reformat the partition/drive.

You can also use a program such as Kill Disk or DBAN

How to erase my hard disk drive and start over.


2. Well, kind of. They are in that you just connect them to the mobo and power and they're ready to go.

not all hard drives are that easy though, if you have an older hard drive that has an IDE interface (the thin/wide cable) you have to check the jumper settings near where the drive's data and power plugs are and make sure that one is set to master and the other is set to slave if you're running more than one...
 
In some cases with ide drives the second was set to cable select rather then slaved depending on which older version of Windows you were running at the time as well as who it was made by. But you first have to see any drive already set up and accessible to place anything on it to be wiped.

The question there however was how to wipe a drive already in use. That could be for removing any OS along with data simply to see another OS installed on a new primary.

Presently the betas for 7 lack the option of deletion as well as partitioning and formatting while still providing the custom install option once an existing partition is selected. That rules out booting from a 7 dvd at the moment for that. Drive partitioning tools like GParted(free), Partition Magic if not any zero filler like a security tool are still the common methods.
 
In some cases with ide drives the second was set to cable select rather then slaved depending on which older version of Windows you were running at the time as well as who it was made by. But you first have to see any drive already set up and accessible to place anything on it to be wiped.

The question there however was how to wipe a drive already in use. That could be for removing any OS along with data simply to see another OS installed on a new primary.

Presently the betas for 7 lack the option of deletion as well as partitioning and formatting while still providing the custom install option once an existing partition is selected. That rules out booting from a 7 dvd at the moment for that. Drive partitioning tools like GParted(free), Partition Magic if not any zero filler like a security tool are still the common methods.

I've seen "cable select" jumper settings do some absolutely retarded things on hard drives and CD/DVD burners, I always set the boot drive as master and the other hdd(s) as slave and have never had a problem...

and I wasn't responding to the original question, that's why I highlighted AR's response and added to what he had said...
 
What I was mentioning there wasn't in regards to a single hard drive slaved to the optical either. Some time back when dual booting XP along with 98 on a second ide drive that was simply unavailable while seen in the post screens until changing the jumper to CS. Then all was well!

For seeing a sata drive made the host OS drive while an ide drive is present the first thing there is to make sure at least the data cable is unplugged to prevent the boot files being placed there by the Windows installer and not on the intended sata drive. That's a case where the ide overrides the sata by default.

For wiping drives when that old version was in common use you would first boot from a floppy and run a dos type zero fill utility which would take all day for what now would be called a "tiny" hard drive like anything under 20gb. The old fdisk tool had popularity back then for simply removing partitions! :D
 
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