I have recently switched hard drives and I'm looking to format my old hard drive which has my previo

[SynisterSilen]

I did this once before and it ended up not letting me boot into Windows at all so I'd like to know how to properly go about doing this.

I have a 1TB HDD as my current hard drive with Windows 8 Pro installed and activated. The secondary hard drive, the once I wish to format, is 300GB and also has Windows 8 Pro activated on it.

[DhoomLord]

If you have the Windows 8 disks, you can boot from the CD and format the 300 GB one. Then after it's formatted, you can simply go into the bios and change the boot order to the 1TB drive. I believe that should work, I'm extremely tech savvy, but I'm sure some googling could do the trick if you're not sure.

[SynisterSilen]

[QUOTE=DhoomLord;38160026]If you have the Windows 8 disks, you can boot from the CD and format the 300 GB one. Then after it's formatted, you can simply go into the bios and change the boot order to the 1TB drive. I believe that should work, I'm extremely tech savvy, but I'm sure some googling could do the trick if you're not sure.[/QUOTE]

See, this is what I did before and it wouldn't let me boot into windows even after doing everything I could in the BIOS...

[DhoomLord]

Are you sure you fixed the boot order? That's my only suggestion.

[SynisterSilen]

[QUOTE=DhoomLord;38160180]Are you sure you fixed the boot order? That's my only suggestion.[/QUOTE]

I "fixed" it and that didn't work so I tried every other combination of the boot order... still didn't work.

I'd just like to be able to format this drive while I still have Win8 running so I don't have to worry about not being able to boot back into my OS. I just got the way I want it and I don't want to have to refresh or reinstall... I'm done doing that, it's annoying after the 4th/5th time.

[GreenDolphin]

You should download DBAN and burn it to a CD-R/DVD-R. Set boot priority in BIOS to boot from the CD first. You should be very careful when using the program as you can accidentally format the wrong drive with little warning. For extra safety measures feel free to disconnect the hard drive you do not want to format before doing so.

[url]http://www.dban.org/download[/url]

[lkymky]

This may help you as well, it definitely helped me when I had to replace one of my HDDs in my JBOD array due to S.M.A.R.T. acting up on one of them.

[url]http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/[/url]

[SynisterSilen]

[QUOTE=GreenDolphin;38163396]You should download DBAN and burn it to a CD-R/DVD-R. Set boot priority in BIOS to boot from the CD first. You should be very careful when using the program as you can accidentally format the wrong drive with little warning. For extra safety measures feel free to disconnect the hard drive you do not want to format before doing so.

[url]http://www.dban.org/download[/url][/QUOTE]

I was just about to use DBAN, but I stopped first and made sure I could boot into Windows from the hard drive I'm wanting to use... I unplugged the one I want to format... and I couldn't boot into windows. So this means that my Win8 on my 1TB requires my Win8 on my 300GB. Is there a way to keep my Win8 activated and bootable? Right now I just care about being able to boot up Win8 on my 1tb.

[SynisterSilen]

Fixed it! I had to run bootrec first to fix the boot loader on my primary disc... formatting my secondary hard drive now.