Need help formatting a drive for W7

[futurejp]

Hi,

I'm currently dual-booting Vista and 7, and I want to get rid of Vista, but I'd like a couple people to just confirm for me that I'd be doing it correctly because I don't want to mess up my MBR or anything like that.

I currently have Vista on my C drive and 7 on my F drive. If I go to Computer Management and then Disk Management, this is what I see:

First, because I have a ThinkPad, I have Q and S drives. But I believe they're irrelevant to this question.

My C drive, with Vista, says it's an NTFS drive, "Healthy (Primary Partition)".

My F drive, with 7, says it's an NTFS drive, "Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Logical Drive)".

If I were to just flat-out right click on the C drive with Vista and click format, and then restart, would I be screwed? Or would it load 7 because it would be my only OS? And if this would be a problem, how should I go about removing Vista?

Thanks

 

[Brink]

Hello FutureJP,

Since it shows Windows 7 as your boot drive, you should be ok to boot into Windows 7 and format the Vista drive. If for some reason Windows 7 will not boot afterwards, then you can run a startup repair with the Windows 7 installation DVD to fix it.

 

[SIW2]

Hi futurejp,

Are they separate drives or partitions?

Which is listed as System, Active ?

 

[Snives]

The only issue I can see would possibly be having a remnant in the boot loader for the Vista install that would lead to dead space. If that does happen just run EasyBCD or check around online for the right command lines to remove it

 

[futurejp]

Hi guys,

They're partitions of the same drive. I originally had XP and wanted to dual-boot with 7, but I had a bad experience partitioning. So I switched to Vista, which I had disks for, and once in Vista, I used the built-in partition tool to create the partition I told you about and then installed 7 on it.

I hardly ever go into Vista for anything right now anyway. Right now, as I'm sure you know, when I boot up my machine it asksme if I want to load 7 or Vista. I just go up/down to the one I want and hit enter. So surely that's what Snives is talking about. Is that a fix I can do right now within 7 beforehand? I can just edit the boot properties somewhere to not even give me the option of going into Vista, and then just format the Vista drive.

I guess my concerns were because I don't know the difference between a standard partition and a Logical Drive, so I want to make sure that if all my computer has is 7 on a logical drive, it will still run fine.

Also, a question about combining partitions. My linear partition breakdown looks like this:

S: 1.5GB - C: (Vista) 81.5GB - F: (W7) 47GB - Q: 20GB

If I format C: into an empty NTFS drive, can I extend my F drive into all that newly unallocated 81.5GB behind it?

 

[SIW2]

Which partition is listed as "System " in Disk management?

Sounds like it is the Vista partition if so, Disk management won't let you delete it.

It is possible to make the 7 partition into the "system" partition - first delete Vista with bootable partion manager, copy 7 partition into new unallocated space, run startup repair to make new 7 partition "system".

It's a lot of steps.

You may prefer to reinstall 7 clean - during the install select Drive Options (advanced) - delete the existing Vista and 7 partitions , and create a new Primary of your chosen size to install 7 onto.

 

[SIW2]

If S is the system partition - you can delete Vista and remove it from boot menu - go to msconfig boot tab and delete it there.

Unfortunately, you can't extend a logical drive to incorporate a Primary partition, or merge them.

Also, you can't mark a logical drive Active - therefore it can't be the "System" partition - tho. it can be a boot partition.

Would help if you post a screenshot of Disk Management :

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-how-post-screenshot-seven-forums.html

 

[futurejp]

Here ya go:

 

[SIW2]

There are a number of ways to do it - assuming you don't want to reinstall 7.

I would delete C, then use the "copy partition" on Paragon hard Disk Manager to copy F into the newly created unallocated space.

You would then be able to boot into either the new C or F.

Make the new C the default in msconfig under the Boot tab, and delete the other entries.

Then delete F logical drive and the extended partition containing it.

Expand the new C to include the unallocated space that was F.

 

[futurejp]

By 'delete C,' you just mean formatting the space into a now blank partition, correct? Also, Paragon HD Manager has limited trial functionality, so will it do what I want it to do?

 

[SIW2]

I meant delete it - to create unallocated space.

If you are going to copy the 7 partition into it - it needs to be unallocated.

Not sure the Paragon trial version is going to do the job.

Are you using 32 or 64 bit o/s ?

 

[futurejp]

32. I mean I could go the re-install 7 route if I had to, but I'd obviously prefer not to.