Unable to format D: drive, no add'l info in error

I'm going to preface this with admitting that I have no idea what I'm doing and only know that I want this drive clean!

I have two hard drives, one of which (the D: drive) I'm trying to format by right-clicking it and selecting Format. The C drive is where I'm running Windows 7 from, but when I go to Computer Management -> Disk Management, it shows this:


I read somewhere that having the Page File active on the D: drive would prevent it from being formatted, but you can see there that it is not active on my D: drive. When I right-click -> Format the D: drive from My Computer screen, Capacity is set to 186 GB (the only option), File system is set to NTFS (Default) (the only option) and Allocation unit size is automatically set to 4096 bytes. For Format Options, only Quick Format is available and already has a checkmark next to it. When I click Start, it says "WARNING: Formatting with erase ALL data on this disk. To format the disk, click OK. To quit, click CANCEL." So, I click OK, and immediately a small window pops up that says "Windows was unable to complete the format."

This D: drive used to be my OS drive before I built this new computer and put my OS on the 500GB. I can't remember what caused it, but I was unable to format this D: drive and clean up all the files on it before, so right now it's sitting here with a whole Windows folder full of stuff I can't delete, and I don't know if that would be affecting this or not. All I know is that my current OS is on my C: drive (and I'm almost 100% positive about this, I swear!) and that I can't format this D: drive with that handy Format option in the right-click menu. I should also add that I do not have a Windows CD, or a disc drive for that matter. Also, in the Boot tab of the System Configuration window, it says "Windows 7 (C:\Windows) : Current OS; Default OS", so I have no idea why that screenshot shows the D drive as System, Active.

Anyone out there that can help?

You could try Diskpart

Open command prompt by clicking on typing CMD in the Search box . Right click on CMD and choose Run as administrator . Your command prompt should open to C:\Windows\System32>_ type in the commands below

Diskpart
List disk

   Note

You should see Disk 0 which is your D drive and Disk 1 is your C drive

Select disk 0
Clean

   Note

Clean command will wipe your D drive

VistaKing said:

You could try Diskpart

Open command prompt by clicking on typing CMD in the Search box . Right click on CMD and choose Run as administrator . Your command prompt should open to C:\Windows\System32>_ type in the commands below

Diskpart
List disk

   Note

You should see Disk 0 which is your D drive and Disk 1 is your C drive

Select disk 0
Clean

   Note

Clean command will wipe your D drive

Absolutely VK Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

nilank said:

First check where your Windows folder really is. Is it on C: or D: ? You're not able to format D: because it is marked as "System, active". Though your bootmanager seems to reside on C:. Pretty weird. You even have labeled your D: as "Windows 7". Check and please do report back.

Regards

Might not be nilank as you can see C: has boot on it and is a Windows default letter.

Just thought install and run this http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-...n-manager.html

right click on the partition and then Explore it will tell you whats in there.

Yep well it will soon show up when the OP opens up that PW and explores. That D: might just be an image for all we know.

Actually it can be explored from the computer management but this is what I see in mine and you cn see boot in the small 100MB partition in C: - X: is the same but does not have a boot ref on either partition.



I have to adnit the shots the OP sent us is rather confusing.