Cleaning a Hard Drive with the Main OS on it

Hey Folks,

Hoping I can get some guidance here.

I am updating all the hardware on my HTPC (New Mobo, processor, ram, video card, PSU) and at the same time upgrading to Vista. My previous HTPC was a Dell 8400 and had XP MCE as an OS.

I've alread taken the computer apart and my question is how do I wipe the previous boot drive clean so I can have a clean install of Vista?

Is there something I can do in the BIOS of the new system I'm building (BTW it will be on the EVGA 680I chipset).

When I tried to clean the drive before I took apart the computer -- the Dell BIOS would not let me saying that there wouldnt be a boot drive any longer.

Also, on a side note -- I have 6 SATA HDD's loaded with my entire DVD collection and other media that I'm planning to transfer into the new HTPC. Is it as simple as plugging in the drives ant they work, or do I need to go through the entire disk management process again -- thus deleleting all the data I have on these drives....

Huge pain in the ass, but if anyone has any insight that they could share it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Dig

The Vista (or any Windows version) installer will take care of formatting your drive when it installs. You don't have to wipe anything to just install a new OS.

You shouldn't lose the data on your 6 SATA HDD's unless you have some esoteric RAID/LVM (dynamic disk) type configuration that Vista might not be compatible with -- I know Vista has had a lot of problems supporting some RAID controllers (although it had no problem with my nForce4 Ultra controller). And if you were using the RAID controller on the old mobo, you will likely lose the data moving to the new mobo anyway unless they have the liexactli same controller. However if the drives were just separate drives then you should be fine, however their drive letters will probably be different than before (easily fixed by Drive Manager).

Thanks for the insight Dmorris. incredibly helpful and reassuring. I'll give the clean install tonight and let you know how it goes.

On teh other HDD's they wernt in raid, so I'm guessing there shouldnt be a problem just plugging them in and letting Vista recognize them.

We'll see what happens there too.