Solved Formatting old OS drive?

[tracingspirals]

Hey, I recently installed a new OS on a SSD and after decided there is nothing useful left on my HDD which contained the old/original OS, I want to remove the old OS from that disk and format it so I can have a new clean disk to use with my new OS.

I tried formatting the disk from the "disk management" utility and it formatted the bit where the windows was installed. But when I try to delete the "System Reseved" partition of my old OS, it gives me this warning:
"The volume System Reserved (E is currently in use. To force the formatting of this volume click yes. WARNING: Forcing a format may cause unexpected errors in the application that is using this volume. Do you with to continue?"

I hit "No" because I was unsure if I should go ahead with this. When I was installing the OS on the SSD I made sure only the SSD was connected to the computer so that it wouldn't copy the system reserved files onto another disk and my computer works fine without the old HDD connected. I just wanna know what is the right way to go about formatting my old HDD to make it like a new HDD that I can use to store things on...

Here is a screenshot of my disk setup:

The Disk 2 is the HDD I want to erase... Thanks!

 

[VistaKing]

Looking at the image Disk 2 has your System Reserved partition which is an Active partition . Unplug all of your Hard Drives except for Disk 1 ( if that's the SSD drive ) and run the Startup repair at least 3 times restart in between the system repair to have Disk 2 be the Active drive .

Then you could use Diskpart to wipe Disk 2 or you could use DBAN .

 

[Bongo]

Windows 7 disk management is not to good at doing things try Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition. and burn it to a CD and boot from it and made your changes.

Jerry

 

[tracingspirals]

Looking at the image Disk 2 has your System Reserved partition which is an Active partition . Unplug all of your Hard Drives except for Disk 1 ( if that's the SSD drive ) and run the Startup repair at least 3 times restart in between the system repair to have Disk 2 be the Active drive .

Then you could use Diskpart to wipe Disk 2 or you could use DBAN .

I unplugged the Disk 2 and the system seems to be running fine although I don't see any "System Reserved" folder.

I don't understand how the system reserved folder went onto the Disk 2 when I had it unplugged all the time I was installing the new OS onto the SSD and updating windows and everything on it...

 

[VistaKing]

To remove the Active mark from Disk 2 Partition 1

:ar: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/197157-partition-mark-inactive.html


See if this will help you marking Disk 1 Partiton 1 Active

:ar: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html

 

[tracingspirals]

OK I ran the startup repair 3 times and it showed no errors. I think my system is recognising the old "system reserved" disk partition as the current one maybe?

Should I just use diskpart to wipe Disk 2??

Here is what diskmanagement looks like when i unplug the Drive 2 (HDD I want to erase)

I cannot make the Disk 1 Partition 1 inactive. The option is not active...

 

[tracingspirals]

Windows 7 disk management is not to good at doing things try Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition. and burn it to a CD and boot from it and made your changes.

Jerry

It would be nice if I could do it through windows and without downloading any extra software though... I just want to erase an HDD I had my old OS on to make it like new...

 

[VistaKing]

Open up an Elevated Command Prompt. Click on rb: in

type CMD . Right click on CMD under Programs (1) choose

. On the User Access Control window click on the Yes button . Command Prompt opens up to C:\Windows\System32>_

Inside the Command Prompt type the following items and press [ENTER] after each commands

Diskpart

List Disk

Select Disk 0

Select Partition 1

Detail Partition

Prnt screen the results and upload the image with your reply

 

[tracingspirals]

I did that and here's the screen shot:

To note disk 1 is the 500GB HDD on which I had my old OS. Also I seem to have noticed when I disconnect the old HDD, the pc runs fine but the "system reserved (E" drive is missing from my computer. Now I can't remember if there was one before when I first installed the OS on the SSD with no other HDDs connected. Although when installing windows 7 onto the SSD (which I did as a GPT drive), I did create a new system reserve partition. So my SSD had 3 paritions. Partition 1: System, Partition 2: MBR and Parition 3: Primary. I don't get it how the "System" partition disappeared from my SSD!!

 

[VistaKing]

Can you do the same commands when the SSD is only plugged in . If I'm not mistaken the SSD should have an Active mark on the System Reserved partition .

 

[tracingspirals]

Here's diskmanager with just the SSD, no system reserve partition to be seen...

And here's a screenshot of my computer, again no system reserved partition...

System's running fine though. No problems at startup or anything...

 

[tracingspirals]

On running diskpart again you can see 3 partitions to the SSD:

And when I try to do anything with the partition in disk manager, it shows this:

So it appears that my SSD has 2 hidden partitions for the OS. Is this normal for a GPT format OS install??

 

[gregrocker]

You appear to have installed Win7 to the SSD using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with since there would be no EFI System partition otherwise.

Can you confirm this is how it was installed?

I'd just plug back in and wipe the old OS HD including SysReserved partition with Diskpart Clean Command to clear the boot code which is all that could interfere going forward. Then repartition it in Disk Mgmt. It's because it holds the Active flag that Disk mgmt doesn't want to delete it. It is not booting anything or it would be marked System. Your only System partition is the EFI one signifying you installed to UEFI BIOS.

More about UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS - YouTube

 

[AddRAM]

Where is your active partition ?

 

[gregrocker]

There is no Active partition or MBR on an EFI install, only one or more EFI System partitions which he has on his new SSD install, signifying it's installed in UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums .

He wanted to delete an old MBR partition on another HD that was balking because it was still marked Active. He may have the UEFI BIOS Compatibility Support Module (CSM) set to Dual mode which recognizes and can boot both UEFI/GPT and MBR HD OS installs on the same system. He needed to remove the Active flag for Disk Mgmt to delete the old Sys Reserved, or better yet wipe the HD to get rid of the old boot code.

 

[tracingspirals]

Hey, thanks for the replies. I did install windows using UEFI. I ended up deleting the old HDD anyway and using the diskpart clean command to make it like new. Everything seems to have turned out fine...

Thanks for the help!