Deleting Vista

[Guest]

I recently bought a computer with two drives in a RAID 1 mirrored state.
Later I undid the RAID configuration so they are two separate drives. Id like
to reformat the second drive clean and start using it as a new drive but I
cannot figure out a way to delete all the files that Vista is protecting,
including itself. No combination of User control access or folder access
permissions seems to work, or at least I havent figured out the correct
permutation. So, How can I delete Vista and all the other system files its
protecting and/or reformat the drive?

 

[Will]

I recently bought a computer with two drives in a RAID 1 mirrored state.
Later I undid the RAID configuration so they are two separate drives. Id
like
to reformat the second drive clean and start using it as a new drive but I
cannot figure out a way to delete all the files that Vista is protecting,
including itself. No combination of User control access or folder access
permissions seems to work, or at least I havent figured out the correct
permutation. So, How can I delete Vista and all the other system files its
protecting and/or reformat the drive?

There will be an easier solution then this but this should work.

Disconnect the drive you want to keep and then boot with a XP disk and
delete the partions and format then exit and reconnect everything. Hopefully
all will be gone by then

 

[Michael]

In general the installation media for whatever so you wish to replace the
vista with will have the capability to partition/format the hard drives as
part of its setup process.

If you let us know what you are replacing the vista with someone here can
point you to user groups for that system.

Hmmmmm am I reading you wrong? do you want to replace your vista with
something else or just use the 'second' hard drive as D: for instance?

In the second instance you will want
control panel
system and maintenance
create and format hard disk partitions (near the bottom)
this will allow you to do things like format the second hard drive.
After you get it formatted you can assign it a letter.

WARNING be very careful! The system should protect the boot drive/partition
but........

Michael

 

[Guest]

You are right that I just want reformat it to make it a second hard drive

It pops up a window that tells me that it "cannot format the system
partition of this disk." Am I correct in assuming that all of the boot and
system files are on both disks since they were mirrored? So it should be safe
to wipe one clean (not that Vista will let me).

Eric

 

[Guest]

As "Astro would say...
"Rots of Ruck!"

You are right that I just want reformat it to make it a second hard drive

It pops up a window that tells me that it "cannot format the system
partition of this disk." Am I correct in assuming that all of the boot and
system files are on both disks since they were mirrored? So it should be safe
to wipe one clean (not that Vista will let me).

Eric

 

[Michael]

Eric,

I am flying blind here as my drives are set to RAID 0 (for speed, not
safety) in the BIOS and don't have a second hard disk from the OS viewpoint.

Do you now have drive letters assigned to each of the hard drives (i.e.. C:
D
If so I would first try removing the drive letter from the 'D' drive.
Right click on the D: drive partition and select change drive letter and
paths, and select remove.

Reboot (hopefully) and try out some programs to make sure things are
working.

Go back to disk management and select the partition again (should not have a
drive assigned to it)
Instead of formatting, try 'deleting' the partition, if successful it should
now show empty. If you 'delete' all partitions on the second drive. you
should then be able to combine them into one partition (if there are more
than one) and then format that combined partition.

There is also a well respected program 'Partition magic' that pretty much
lets you do anything to any disk with relative safety. It costs but you
might consider it.

BE CAREFUL and think before each YES when playing around here. If you have
Vista business/ultimate I suggest you do a complete system backup, if a
relative new machine It should take maybe 6 DVD-RWs. If Vista home versions
then a complete data backup (about the same size) would be a good idea also
(you have to reinstall from your Vista DVD and then reinstall your software
and then restore your data from the backups.

Michael