“I’ve installed a 1TB hard drive from my old PC. It has files but no operating system. How can I wipe it to use its full storage?”

You don’t need to wipe it. Simple re-partitioning and reformatting will make the drive fully available to you.

And that’s a very good thing, because wiping a drive involves overwriting every spot on the disk — in your case, a trillion bytes’ worth. On an average system and HDD, that’d probably take something like two full days!

It’s worth the time when you actually need to erase all traces of past disk contents, but you’re just looking to reuse the disk space, right?

For that, it’s far easier — minutes, not days — simply to repartition and quick reformat your old drive. Here’s how:

With the drive installed in the new location, open Disk Management (type disk management in the cortana/search box; select the offered tool). You’ll see a graphic representation of all your system’s drives. Select the target drive (the one you want to repartition); right click on any partition listed on that drive and select Delete volume. Repeat for all other partitions on that drive until the entire space is shown as Unallocated. Right-click anywhere on the unallocated space; select New simple volume, and follow the steps. When it’s offered, select Quick format. You’re done!

Your entire old drive is now fully returned to service. Any data fragments left behind from previous use will eventually get overwritten in the normal course of events; no extra steps needed.

Enjoy your new space!

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