Has anyone ever erased everything from an EHD?

[bttrflygrl]

I'm doing a major re-org of my photos. I have two EHD's - one is current, the other was supposed to be a second backup, but it hasn't been updated in ages. Without going into a whole explanation, I need to "empty out" the second EHD so it can hold a bunch of files temporarily while I move things around, just to ensure that if I screw up I'll have it all backed up. So...

Is there anything I should know or be careful of when deleting everything from an EHD? Thanks!

[ditzyscrap]

You should be able to just delete everything off it...there aren't any files on it (usually...unless you're running a program FROM the EHD to backup to it) that are required to make it be a hard drive.

You should be able to just go into My Computer and format the drive, actually...

[Sharon Kay]

Funny you should ask this TODAY. Within the last hour I just got back from the locally owned (20 years in business) computer store. I just got a new internal drive installed on my laptop there. I had 2 externals fail on me...and had them set up like you do. We just figured out today what probably caused both of those hard drives to fail...although the failures looked different.

I would delete everything on that 2nd drive...then copy everything from first drive and paste onto 2nd drive...AT ONE TIME.

The guy at the store thinks that is what caused my problems...too much data at one time. I asked him what he recommends and he said...first off if you must delete everything off that drive...DEFRAG IT! that way the data is all aligned up and not scattered when you go to write to it again. Second DO NOT copy more than about 5 GB of data at a time. ...and some pictures are corrupt...never to have again.

I was copying 200 GB to 400 GB of data at a time...he was surprised they didn't crash before that time. He said it is really hard on the drives for that much of a data transfer. Even on a "light transfer" it would still be 25 GB and up.

I'm going to be much more careful now...having 500 GB of data restored cost me $645 ... and it messed up my file structure so now I am having to hunt down photos...and tons of things are in folders that are labeled "NEW FOLDER_001" "NEW FOLDER_002", etc.

I am going to have all my pictures on my new internal drive in my laptop, on a 250 GB ehd, on a 1.5 TB ehd, and on DVDs (that will be stored at my mom's house)...and have started using Mozy online backup service! I am determined never to lose my data again!

[bttrflygrl]

OMG Sharon! This is totally causing me a heart attack!! I only have 35 gig to copy, but I'm extremely nervous about it now. Please, please wish me luck!