Since my SSD died I've been using my mechanical drive as my boot drive and Im getting my replacement tomorrow and wondering if there is a way to just uninstall windows from my mech drive with out reformatting since I dont have enough free space to move my files.
Hello Earl,
Could you post back with a screenshot of your Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) window showing your full HDD layout? This will allow us to give you a more accurate answer.
For now, I would say disconnect the HDD when you are ready to install Windows 7 on the new SSD.
Afterwards, connect the HDD back, delete or format only the partition that Windows 7 is on. If you delete it, then you could extend another partition on the HDD into the "unallocated space" to merge them.
Let's see what the screenshot shows before doing anything though. :)
In that case, you could just disconnect the HDD, and install Windows 7 to the new SSD.
When finished, connect the HDD back, and copy over any files you want to the SSD. All programs and drivers will have to be reinstalled in the Windows 7 on the SSD though.
When finished copying what you want, you could then format the HDD to use as a data drive if you like.
the 240Gb wont be able to hold all of the data I need to move, but thanks for helping :)
You can also shrink Win7 partition on the HDD to move the data to an adjacent data partition created for that purpose, freeing up enough space to empty the OS partition so it can be deleted.
Following How to extend partition easily with partition magic – Partition Wizard video help,
you can keep adding the space from the shrinking C as you copy User folder data over to the data partition until it is emptied of data and you can delete it.
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