You're only guessing anything is messed up.
Diskpart is run from the installation disc. You start the install over and hit shift F10 at the first screen when you are asked to pick a language. That gives you a command prompt, where you run Diskpart.
No, it's not bad to keep reinstalling. Get over the phobia about writing to an SSD.
Ok nice I'm going to do it. so just type in diskpart in the command prompt and it's a pretty easy walk-thru?
Make sure all drives except the SSD are disconnected, then boot from the installation disc and hit shift F10 when asked to pick a language. Then at the command prompt:
Type in the following commands one by one, followed by the Enter key to create a partition (text in parentheses are comments only):
list disk (to show the ID number of the hard disk to partition, normally Disk 0)
select disk 0 (change 0 to another number if applicable)
clean (this wipes the drive of anything on it; not needed on a brand new drive)
create partition primary (this will create one primary partition covering the entire drive; if you instead want to create a primary partition of 80 GB, add “size=80000” after the word “primary”)
select partition 1 (this selects the partition you just made)
active (this marks that partition active)
format fs=ntfs quick (this formats that partition)
exit (this quits the diskpart program)
exit (this closes the command prompt window)
Continue Windows 7 installation as usual. Remember to highlight and select the partition just created when you come to the partition screen asking you "where do you want to install Windows?”.
Thanks for the walk thru. I'm going to call it a night for now & go at it tomorrow and get it all taken care of.
Thanks for the help everyone.
Well apparently I can't do shift F10 with my Microsoft wireless keyboard during setup.
If I hook up the SSD while keeping my HDD as first boot, I should be able to format it properly in disk format right?
You can ignore diskpart and just do another standard install like you did before. The drive you choose to put Windows on will be formatted automatically. It was formatted automatically before, the first time you did it. The only reason you were directed to Diskpart was because you wanted everything to be "perfect" and you were worried about something being on the SSD.
I don't have the slightest clue about wireless keyboards or why they might accept some keystrokes and not others, such as the shift key and the F10 key.
I'm not sure what you mean by "in disk format".
And I'm not sure why you would be "keeping my HDD as first boot" when installing to an SSD. You don't want your HDD to be involved in the process at all.
Just follow the steps the above users have given ya and you should be good to go. Just post back if there are any issues that come up.
Hmm ok. I just brought that up because my original Magician Write space said .01 & after I re-installed windows it said 0.4 so i was assuming there was something left on there & I wanted to do a clean wipe.
So I can't have my HDD as the main boot device & slave the SSD so I can run Disk Part in "Create & Format Disk Partitions" to get it completely erased?
There are no "slaves" in SATA land.
The problem with your idea is that you now have 2 drives with a Windows installation. As far as I know, each of them is bootable and working OK.
Do you know for a fact that the HDD will boot your PC if it is the only drive connected? You need to confirm that.
If you boot from one hard drive and try to use Diskpart on the other (from a command prompt, not from the install disk), you'd have to use the list disk and select disk commands in Diskpart to ensure that you were operating on the right disk (the SSD)--before you use the clean or format commands.
After the SSD was formatted, you'd exit diskpart, shut down, disconnect the HDD, connect the SSD to the motherboard ports formerly used by the HDD, reboot from your install disk and install to the SSD.
I think that would work.
You could also use other programs such as Gparted to wipe the disk, but they are Linux-based.
Or you could just forget about reformatting the SSD.
Maybe someone else has a better idea.
Johnny.
As far as I know you had reinstalled from your original Win 7 Pro disc & all seemed OK. If that install is still unchanged just use it as it is. I don't think reinstalling is going to give you a better result.
Don't be concerned about what Magician tells you about writes etc. as it keeps a total of writes to the SSD & it does not mean there is stuff still left on the SSD.
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