Installed 7 Home Prm on Del with 2 Drives. How do I clean off D Drive?

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  1. Posts : 12
    Windows 7 32 bit Home Premium
       #1

    Installed 7 Home Prm on Del with 2 Drives. How do I clean off D Drive?


    I have just installed 7 home premium of my Dell XPS computer that has two drives. Before installing Windows 7, I had XP on the C drive and all data on the D drive. After the install, my D drive lost all of my data, and ended up with Windows.old on it. I have been trying to clean off the D drive so that I can keep my personal files there. So far, I have deleted most of the Windows.old but have discovered that some systems files are in-use and will not come off. I have read a number of post on this forum that seem to be a similar problem, but am still a bit confused. Should I do a clean, format, make D inactive, or other. If I make D inactive, can I safely finish deleting the system files? Or maybe Reformat it? Here are two screen shots that I hope might help:

    I hope this works. This is my first posting of this forum. Thanks for any help.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Installed 7 Home Prm on Del with 2 Drives. How do I clean off D Drive?-diskpart-list-vol-1.jpg   Installed 7 Home Prm on Del with 2 Drives. How do I clean off D Drive?-disk-mgt-1.jpg  
    Last edited by jj643; 06 Dec 2013 at 21:00.
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  2. Posts : 12
    Windows 7 32 bit Home Premium
    Thread Starter
       #2

    I have read everything that I could on this forum but still was unsure. I tried changing D to inactive. After that, the system would not boot. I used a system repair disk to repair the problem and change D back to active. So, obviously there is more to this than just changing D to inactive.

    What I want is for the system to only use C to boot and run and let me have D entirely for data. Is this a bad idea? I do a lot of video editing and may fill this drive up and eventually want to replace it with a larger drive. Thanks for any help.
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  3. Posts : 5
    Windows 7 Home Premium x64
       #3

    jj643 said:
    I have read everything that I could on this forum but still was unsure. I tried changing D to inactive. After that, the system would not boot. I used a system repair disk to repair the problem and change D back to active. So, obviously there is more to this than just changing D to inactive.

    What I want is for the system to only use C to boot and run and let me have D entirely for data. Is this a bad idea? I do a lot of video editing and may fill this drive up and eventually want to replace it with a larger drive. Thanks for any help.
    It seems that you have installed windows 7 onto your d drive. During setup there is a window to select which drive to install windows on. What I think you should do is reinstall windows 7 but before you do that, backup anything important. Then once you get to the window to choose where you want to put the windows installation which in your case is drive C. Once you're done with that, make sure you backed up everything you need, go to the windows explorer, right click the d drive click format, and a window should pop up. Leave all of that alone. But, if you want you can change the name of the drive with the text field at the bottom of the window. Click start. This may take a while. Once you are done, use the free drive for whatever you want!
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  4. Posts : 12
    Windows 7 32 bit Home Premium
    Thread Starter
       #4

    Windows 7 is on the C drive. C is listed as the Boot drive. From what I can tell, the Windows 7 Upgrade made a copy of Windows on the D drive named Windows.old. So far, I have deleted almost all of this old stuff except for some system files that are in use. After deleting all of this old stuff, my computer still boots up and runs OK.
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  5. Posts : 12
    Windows 7 32 bit Home Premium
    Thread Starter
       #5

    I hate to do another reply to my own thread but I have been working on this and have run into another confusion. I have installed Partition Wizard. In the process of running PW, I noticed that the file status on PW and Disk Management didn't agree? Disk Management (DM) shows my D drive as (System, Active). PW shows it as (Active, Boot). DM shows my C drive as (Boot, Page File, etc). Pw shows it as (System). I am including a screen shot from PW. Can anybody make any since of this?
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Installed 7 Home Prm on Del with 2 Drives. How do I clean off D Drive?-partition-majic-1.jpg  
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  6.    #6

    Your old files on the D Drive may be in windows.old so browse through it to see.

    Always unplug all other HD's when doing an install. Otherwise it will configure a multi-boot if other OS's are plugged in, requiring repairs to remove one.

    In Disk Mgmt "System" means the partition currently booting Win7 where the boot files reside, while "Boot" mean the partition that is presently booted. In PW these mean the exact opposite. "Active" is a pointer to the partition intended to boot.

    To do what you want from PW rightclick on D to Modify, Set to Inactive, click OK. Then rightclick C to Modify>Set to Active, OK, Apply. Power down to unplug D drive, swap its cable to C so that C drive is now Disk0, plugged in alone and set as first HD to boot in BIOS setup.

    Now run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times from booted Win7 installation media until Win7 starts on C and is marked System Active.

    You can then plug back in D to Disk1 cable, access its data from C Win7, when ready delete it in Disk Mgmt or to get it cleanest back up all files and wipe the HD with Diskpart Clean Command.
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  7. Posts : 12
    Windows 7 32 bit Home Premium
    Thread Starter
       #7

    Thanks for the advice but I have problems with it. First, The windows.old on D, I have deleted everything that I could and that was nearly all of it. The advice about unplugging the D drive when doing the install would have helped if I had had any warning prior. I didn't. Having Disk Mgt and PW tell opposite things just adds more confusion. Next, your advice to rightclick on C to modify it to Active doesn't work. PW does not give me an option to change it to Active.

    Is there another way to do this without unplugging and plugging?

    I have looked earlier in my Bios to see if there was a way to specify which drive it should boot to first. I never found an option to do that. This is an 8 year old Dell that came with XP. Is it possible I need to upgrade the Bios? Also, when I boot, I am getting a screen which ask me which OS I want to boot, Windows 7 or another. When I boot the other which I assume is the old system on D, it fails immediately.

    Do you think there is any way the 'Startup Repair - Run 3 Seperate Times' would work for me without the unplug and replug?

    Thanks
    Last edited by jj643; 07 Dec 2013 at 18:57.
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  8. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #8

    I would do this - it's the easiest solution. Then you can reformat D and use it for data.

    Note: Greg will not agree. He will advise a good purist solution - which is more work.

    I like fast and simple even if I lose a couple of functions that I never use.
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  9. Posts : 19,383
    Windows 10 Pro x64 ; Xubuntu x64
       #9

    In this case I agree with WHS - use the tutorial he linked for the quickest solution.
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  10. Posts : 12
    Windows 7 32 bit Home Premium
    Thread Starter
       #10

    Many thanks guys. I have downloaded EasyBCD. It may be a day or two before I can read everything and give it a go. Thanks.
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