Hello, I was wondering if a precleared disk (any make or model) once used and taken out of the array, can that precleared disk be formatted to NTFS and used in a local computer ?

 

*disks being precleared and have an align partition at sector 64.*

 

I have some older disks I have taken out of my array and if I can still make use of them I would like to. Thank you

Hello, I was wondering if a precleared disk (any make or model) once used and taken out of the array, can that precleared disk be formatted to NTFS and used in a local computer ?

 

*disks being precleared and have an align partition at sector 64.*

 

I have some older disks I have taken out of my array and if I can still make use of them I would like to. Thank you

You can put the disk in your window's machine and it will do just fine.  you'll need to format it to NTFS.  You can either leave the partition whee it is, or create it again, either way is fine.

...the short answer to this is: yes, without problems

 

This is correct, as far as the preclear process is concerned.

In order to re-use the disk in another Windoze based computer, you will have to re-create partitions completely (and that OS is going to align MBR sectors as needed)

To move a disk as "fresh", just clear the MBR by copying zeros to the first 1k bytes before moving it.

If you plan to move over a WDEARS drive, consider (re-)placing the jumper if your OS is still XP.

 

Oups: too late 

Thank you, yah it was just going to be used as an NTFS external or a slave in a windoze system ... won't be installing any OS to it. Thank you for the input

FYI.  I do this now with all drives destined for windows boxes.  I run 3 preclear cycles then put it in the Windows Box and re-partition and format.