October 18, 201312 yr sorry if this is a dumb question, but i'm removing a drive from my windows pc, and i want to preclear to test it and possibly add to the array the drive in the windows box is currently formatted with two partitions do i need to delete the partitions and format in windows, or can i just put in the unraid server and preclear. will preclear 'undo' the partitions? the drive is already out of the windows machine... i could put it back in and format, delete partitions etc, but i'd prefer to just stick right into unraid if there's no issues. thanks!
October 18, 201312 yr A preclear completely errases the disk. It does put a signature on the drive and an unFormatted Linux partition on it but is otherwise just a bunch of zeroes on the drive. So no need to do anything unless you want to save the info from the drive.
October 18, 201312 yr Author ok thanks, i will be making sure all of the data on the drive is safely backed up elsewhere so that i can just zero it out thanks for replying!
October 19, 201312 yr pre-clear is also very useful if you want to completely erase a disk before disposing of it or selling it. just "deleting" the files doesnt actually delete them.
October 19, 201312 yr pre-clear is also very useful if you want to completely erase a disk before disposing of it or selling it. just "deleting" the files doesnt actually delete them. Agree -- but simply using a manufacturer's "Write Zeroes" function does the same thing notably quicker ... and if you really want to be CERTAIN nothing's recoverable (which it could be after a single write of all zeroes), you'd want to use a multi-pass wipe with a utility like Eraser, dBAN, etc.
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