Formatting WD Red to default

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Hi.
I have just removed 2 x 4TB WD Red drives from my NAS as I have replaced these with higher capacity drives.

I am now wanting to format these drives so they are back to their ‘factory default’, ready to be installed in another NAS (my brother is going to install them).

Do I just connect these drives to a PC and format using the Windows Format utility? Or is there another way I should format these? I don’t necessarily need them formatted for Windows, just ready to go into another NAS with no data on them.

Thanks in advance
Chris

2

Pretty sure when you install them into a different NAS device it will format them so it can use them as needed. You could also use MiniTool Partition Wizard (Free) and just remove the partitions, no formatting, then install the drive.

3

I suggest WD Lifeguard and do a full erase of old disks so that spare sectors can be activated as needed

4

If the disks are formatted EXT4 (which most NAS Drives are) … then WD Lifeguard wont see them.

3rd Party Software will.

I use AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard (Free) which will recognize Linux Partitions (EXT) on a Windows PC and format and erase them.

5

Thank you everyone.