Reformat HDD for desktop use

[travalon]

I know read it in my lurking days but can't seem to confirm what I think I know now.
I just detached and marked as new 2 drives that will ultimately end up in a desktop as back up.
Do I just format them to NTFS now?
That is all, thank you.

 

[dlavigne]

If they are formatted with ZFS now you'll have to first run a program such as Active@ KillDisk to remove all of the metadata.

 

[Ericloewe]

ZFS stores metadata at several fixed locations, so a thorough wipe is probably best. It will take a long time, so leave it overnight.

 

[solarisguy]

Erasing the first 4GB and the last 4GB with dd (for example using Cygwin under Windows) is probably more than enough.

Then reformatting it using Windows.

 

[travalon]

I just ran gparted in Linux, added a partition table and formatted to NTFS. It went awfully quick so I'm not sure I recovered all the space. Double checking now and will post results if I find any.

 

[AltecBX]

Couldn't you use diskpart in windows?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[travalon]

Properties show 2tb per disk and the gparted tool shows 1.82tb each. I think I got it all. Its that whole 1024 vs 1000mb per gig argument.

 

[travalon]

I suppose I could use disk part if I used Windoze. I have a machine with it but the disks aren't in there. I'll transfer them to check though.
Thanks for everyone's response.