How to format your spare hard drive in Windows

Reasons why you would want to format your spare hard drive

• To clean the hard drive of all previous information and start a fresh.
• To recycle an old hard drive to use for storage.
• To get rid of corrupted files or viruses.

If your hard drive is not attached to anything

• Install it into your computer as a second hard drive How to install a hard drive
• Put it in an external USB hard disk case. What is an external hard drive?

Once your spare hard drive is installed in some way, it can be formatted from Windows XP or Vista.
If the spare hard drive is in attached in your computer as storage
If your hard drive is attached to your computer as a second hard drive, it is very easy to format. Because it does not hold the operating system, we can format it from My Computer.

1. Go to the start menu at the bottom left of your desktop.
2. Choose My Computer for Windows XP or Computer for Windows Vista.
3. Right click on the hard drive you want to format.
4. Please double check that you have the right hard drive.
5. Choose Format from the menu. All data will be lost. The hard drive will be like brand new.
6. After choosing to format  you will be asked to reconfirm your decision.

 article source:http://tips4pc.com/articles/computer%20maintenance/how_to_format_your_spare_hard_dr.htm