Resolved Question about reformatting and hard drive files

I'm gonna reformat my computer w/ a 75gb IDE HD. After that, i wanna connect a 250gb sata HD. will the data stay on the sata drive, or does it have to be wiped clean if i wanna connect it to the computer?

Also, if all that works, i wanna reformat again, but this time with both drives. can i do that?

 

You can connect your SATA drive to the computer & the data would be there. You don't have to format it if you don't want to.

You can format the drives any time you want provided you have the backup . But why would you want to do that ?

 

my windows repair got stuck so im gonna reformat everything, but w/ another hard drive. the 250gb has never been reformatted and is over 3 years old. have a lotta files i dont need on that drive anyway.

 

The age of the hard disk has got nothing to do with the formatting. Format only lays down the logical information on hard disk for holding info about directory & file structures.

But its a quick way to get rid of old data & files.

 

Retrieving the data files from your 250Gb SATA should be straight forward enough (before the format ) but don't expect to recover usable program files, you'll need to reinstall the majority of those from original media/downloads.

 

only files i want are videos/movies/music/documents. anything else i can backup is a plus