Want to delete Vista / dual boot leaving Win7 - Seperate HDDs

I would like to remove Vista from my dual boot setup. Here is how I got to where I am now.

I had Vista installed on my PC hard drive (was C:). Later, I decided to install Win7 HP on a new and seperate HDD. I unplugged the Vista HDD and added the new HDD and installed Win7 as if from scratch (I was worried that the install would mess up all my files on Vista). After the Win7 was up and running, I then reconnected Vista redesignated it as drive E: and after some searching on how to, I created the dual boot using my Win7 disk so I'm assuming the boot file in on drive C: along with Win7.

I now want delete the dual boot and Vista so I can use the drive as a backup drive or possibly Win8. I have found several methods to do this but none that really have my specific situation.

Can someone direct me on the proper path.

Thanks .........

Boot into windows 7.

Look in disk mgmt and ensure the system partition is NOT the one containing Vista.

If that is the case, simply use msconfig to remove Vista entry from boot menu - then you can delete/format Vista partition.

How do I know for sure that the Win7 has the boot information? I do not want to end up freezing my PC due to my deleting Vista from the msconfig - system config. boot and then wipe the old Vista volume (or just delete everything I can)? Is there a file I can find that will tell me that Win7 can stand alone (which I'm pretty sure it can since I installed it as a clean install)? I'm just overly cautious cos of past experence.

Please post back a screenshot of your maximized Disk Management drive map with listings.

If Win7 or it's 100mb System Reserved partition is marked System Active then you can remove Vista, or after moving data off wipe it's HD using Diskpart Clean Command

It never needed to have a Windows Dual Boot menu anyway since it's much cleaner to boot via the BIOS, setting preferred to boot first then booting the other using the one-time BIOS Boot Menu key.