Solved How to remove a System Reserved partition on a data drive?

[rnb250]

Hi Everyone
I recently added another Hard Drive that had a partially installed version of W7 on it (long story!)
When it booted up, Windows said it was installing software on it, I am thinking maybe because of the Windows files on there it was thinking I wanted a dual boot setup?
When I looked under My Computer (my-computer.png) it had changed the letter of my removable USB drive and added the new drive (F) along with a System Reserved Drive (E).
I assume E is a partition on the same drive as F as it shows up under Computer Management as belonging to Disk 1 (hard-drives.png).
I quick formatted F and rebooted and then tried disconnecting, reconnecting and rebooting but it remains there.
What I would like to know is:
1. Is it definitely on the new drive F?
2. How I can remove it / re-format and just use F solely as a data drive?
Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
With thanks and regards
Harley M Storey

 

[theog]

Delete partition E:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2668-partition-volume-delete.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

 

[gregrocker]

The drive is not bootable on its own (System) so you can delete both E and F once the data is moved off, then repartition the drive as you wish.

If the drive interferes at all I'd wipe it with Diskpart Clean Command to clear the old code from the boot sector, then repartition.

 

[whs]

Comment withdrawn to avoid confusion.

 

[theog]

The System Reserved is marked System & Active, therefore the boot partition.

 

[whs]

The System Reserved is marked System & Active, therefore the boot partition.

You are right. I missed that little detail. Will withdraw my comment.

 

[rnb250]

Thanks for your help everyone.
I have deleted the partitions and reformatted the drive, however when doing so Windows told me that other processes were accessing the partitions and forcing partition delete may cause the system to become unstable.
Anyone have any ideas what those processes might be in case I run into any future issues?
Is this what gregrocker meant when he said "If the drive interferes..."?
thanks and regards
Harley

 

[gregrocker]

The warning might have been generated by the presence of the Active flag which signals which partition is to be bootable, but it wasn't independently bootable or there would be a System flag as well.

The interference I was referring to is if having the drive connected slows boot of C. This might mean that boot code which remains on the HD is interfering and wiping the HD of all boot code (which deleting and formatting doesn't do) may resolve it.

 

[rnb250]

Hi Greg,
Thanks for the help.
I checked under Folder Options / View / and selected "Show Hidden files" and unchecked "Hide protected operating system files."
I couldnt see any files on the disc, does this mean that a clean is uneccessary? - with a 2TB drive it would take a while.
best
Harley

 

[gregrocker]

Well you've already formatted the HD, correct? So it wouldn't show any boot files anyway. What's important that gets cleaned is code in the boot sector which might be interfering, such as the nt60 bootsect code which makes a Win7 drive bootable at one time but remains if the OS is deleted or formatted over.

Clean just take seconds to wipe the boot sector and partition table. It's Clean All that takes a long time and is overkilll for these purposes, only needed to make data unrecoverable.

 

[pallesenw]

The warning might have been generated by the presence of the Active flag which signals which partition is to be bootable, but it wasn't independently bootable or there would be a System flag as well.

About the system flag... "System" just indicates that this is the partition from which you started. If you change the boot order in bios then another active partition (with boot files) will become the system partition.

 

[rnb250]

Just for anyone else who may find this thread useful, this is what I did:

Opened command prompt
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/783-elevated-command-prompt.html

Cleaned disk
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html

Initialized as MBR Partition Style (as it is a Western Digital Disk and this is what they recommended)
How to initialize or write a signature to a secondary hard drive or Solid State drive in Windows (8, 7, Vista, XP)

Created and formatted the volume
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

Hope this is useful for others and thanks to everyone for their kind advice.
Cheers
Harley

 

[gregrocker]

Thanks for reporting back, Harley. If there's nothing else then you can mark thread Solved at top.