Unable to Format a free partition space in WIN 7...

Remember he said he "upgraded" from Vista to 7 also but it sounded like he said he was having issues even before the upgrade.

Windows 7 creates a partition ahead of the actual primary partition in use which would show as "system reserved" and is usually 100 MB it sounds like something went wrong in the upgrade (no big surprise)

Like I said i would start from scratch at this point.

Unallocated Space is space that has not been partitioned.

Free space is unused space inside a partition.

You would need to create another logical drive from the Free space, then format it.

computersplus said:

Windows 7 creates a partition ahead of the actual primary partition in use which would show as "system reserved" and is usually 100 MB.

Only under certain circumstances , and not when you do an in-place upgrade.

SIW2 said:

computersplus said:

Windows 7 creates a partition ahead of the actual primary partition in use which would show as "system reserved" and is usually 100 MB.

Only under certain circumstances , and not when you do an in-place upgrade.

I never do upgrades so you maybe right about that.... none the less I would wipe the whole thing and start over.

Cato said:

seekermeister said:

No, unallocated/free space is not a partition, therfore it can't be deleted.

Makes sense. So would he have an option to extend his D: volume into that space? I have extended and shrunk with Vista, but it's been awhile and I have low retention rate the older I get. I seem to remember something about the extendable space being to the right of the volume you're extending, though. Maybe I had just better leave this alone before I confuse the poor guy more. :)

It seems that you and I are in the same boat. If it were not for the fact that I have been dealing with this kind of thing myself recently, I wouldn't be able to answer his question. Six months from now, ask me about this, and all that you would probably get from me is a dumb look.

However, since I last posted, it occurred to me that what I said might only be partially right. I think that it is possible to create a partition without formatting it, and it would contain unallocated space, and the partition could be deleted, leaving the same unallocated space free. It seems like I did this long ago, in preparation for installing Linux on a partition. I let Linux do the formatting. However, that is not the case at hand.

You have to create a partition first before you can format it, free space is just that free space.

For all intents and purposes you are correct, but if you select the option for it to not format a partition, it is marked as raw, which I think is essentially the same as unallocated/free space, except that it is contained within a partition.

Cato said:

Often times when I want to clean out and re-format a partition I right click on the partition (with Computer Management) and select "Delete Volume." Then I'm allowed to format.

Don't know if the same thing would apply in your case.

nope... its not possible....

If you decide to wipe the drive entirely, and start from scratch, I would make two recommendations...place your C: partition ahead of all others and make it larger than you have. You will fill the space that you now have very quickly.