Do the harddrives need to be clean to access via console

I'm trying to boot to install version 18.2, the hard drive has already 17.0 installed (possibly corrupted as the NAS is acting really weird) and trying to update throws a 303 error extracting, but it gets stuck on waiting for u-boot and the boot continues instead of giving me the options to install it
I'm reusing PC Hdds and i was expecting to format them within the NAS
I'm reusing PC Hdds and i was expecting to format them within the NAS