04-16-2010, 12:35 AM

Que Pasa Amigos,

Could someone tell me how to wipe clean a foreign disk drive?

Here's the situation...my laptop died (fails to boot after 15-minute power cycle) so I removed the HD and plugged it into my iMac to transfer files. Well, now I'd like to wipe the PC's HD clean so that I can use it for storage space. The problem is that I get a "No Access Privileges" when I try to drag the old files into the trash.

How can I solve this problem and wipe clean a foreign disk drive?

Muchas Gracias,



Macademia

PS. I'm planning on running it through a metal detector a couple times if there's no technical solution.

04-16-2010, 02:00 PM

To make sure I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like your Windows laptop died and you transferred all the files you wanted to your Mac. Now you just want to format the Windows hard drive?

It sounds like you placed the Windows hard drive into an external enclosure or something similar. Anyway if you can access it with your Mac then you can format the hard drive. While the hard drive is connected to your Mac you have to open Disk Utilities in your Applications folder under the sub-folder Utilities.

Click on the Windows hard drive on the left and then click on the erase tab and format it to either Mac Extended Journaled or to FAT. If you want to use the hard drive for both Windows and Mac then you need to format it to FAT. Everything will be erased so make sure you transferred everything you wanted.

04-23-2010, 12:21 AM

Originally Posted by EndlessMac

To make sure I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like your Windows laptop died and you transferred all the files you wanted to your Mac. Now you just want to format the Windows hard drive?

It sounds like you placed the Windows hard drive into an external enclosure or something similar. Anyway if you can access it with your Mac then you can format the hard drive. While the hard drive is connected to your Mac you have to open Disk Utilities in your Applications folder under the sub-folder Utilities.

Click on the Windows hard drive on the left and then click on the erase tab and format it to either Mac Extended Journaled or to FAT. If you want to use the hard drive for both Windows and Mac then you need to format it to FAT. Everything will be erased so make sure you transferred everything you wanted.

Thanks, man...but, unfortunately, none of the controls [within Disk Utility] are operable. I think it might be because I can't log into the user account of the foreign hard drive (the PC Laptop Hard Drive which has been removed). I'm gonna call up HP and see what those bums have to say.

By the way, when I say "foreign" hard drive I'm just saying that I physically removed it [from the trashed laptop] and plugged it into my G4 (via EZ Connect = $15).