system optimisation: assistance with deleting vista

I thought that might be the case.

Yes I browse into E and create shortcuts to E in order to run and view things.

If you want to do it right and end up with a clean HD for storage you'll need to delete the Vista partition. I'd organize my data and move it to Win7 partition, the 8gb Vista Recovery partition which you delete and create a New Data partition there, another HD or USB external, another computer on the network, 15gb of free storage on Skydrive with each Windows Live ID, or a partition shrunk from Vista partition to move data into, then shrink it more as Vista partition empties until all is left of Vista is the OS, then delete Vista partition.

To do this, since it involves Resizing a partition to the left, use free Partition Wizard's Resize function which is fast and efficient. Video tutorial here: http://partitionwizard.com/video-hel...partition.html

hmm, I may just wait til I purchase a new HDD in a few months then clone it onto the new one.