reformat and subsequent disk issue

[rtdavide]

ok, first off, i haven't posted here for a while, but last time I did
it was kind of complaining against Vista since it had slowed my system
down so much, however, i just upgraded from my old dual processor
athlon 1.8's and 2 gigs of 400 RAM to an Intel Q6600 and 2 gigs of
1066 RAM.......

I actually like Vista now. Everything flies. but enough of that....

my HDs are a SATA and an IDE, the SATA had the C drive and OS and the
IDE was a backup.
but when I changed the Motherboard and processor etc, it seems like it
read it the IDE as disk0 and the SATA as disk1. when I reformatted
what I thought was the C drive, i was reformatting one of the
partitions on the IDE and the thing wouldn't boot. so I figured it out
and reformatted the right drive and partition the second time, but now
when it boots up i have 2 options for vista, the correct one on the
SATA C drive and a partial install on the IDE D drive.
i wanted to just go in and reformat the D from the disk managment but
it's not available as an option because it's listed as "system,
active, primary partition"
the actual SATA C drive is listed as 'Boot, PageFile,Active, Crash
Dump, Primary Partition"

Ultimately I want the extra Windows files OFF the D drive so I can
restore it to the backup, but I don't want to screw with anything so
that windows won't boot.
What has to happen before I can get those files off?
I'm sort of assuming that as long as the disk is both active and
system, formatting it isn't even an option. any way to remove those
attributes?

thanks,

 

[Andy]

ok, first off, i haven't posted here for a while, but last time I did
it was kind of complaining against Vista since it had slowed my system
down so much, however, i just upgraded from my old dual processor
athlon 1.8's and 2 gigs of 400 RAM to an Intel Q6600 and 2 gigs of
1066 RAM.......

I actually like Vista now. Everything flies. but enough of that....

my HDs are a SATA and an IDE, the SATA had the C drive and OS and the
IDE was a backup.
but when I changed the Motherboard and processor etc, it seems like it
read it the IDE as disk0 and the SATA as disk1. when I reformatted
what I thought was the C drive, i was reformatting one of the
partitions on the IDE and the thing wouldn't boot. so I figured it out
and reformatted the right drive and partition the second time, but now
when it boots up i have 2 options for vista, the correct one on the
SATA C drive and a partial install on the IDE D drive.
i wanted to just go in and reformat the D from the disk managment but
it's not available as an option because it's listed as "system,
active, primary partition"
the actual SATA C drive is listed as 'Boot, PageFile,Active, Crash
Dump, Primary Partition"

Ultimately I want the extra Windows files OFF the D drive so I can
restore it to the backup, but I don't want to screw with anything so
that windows won't boot.
What has to happen before I can get those files off?
I'm sort of assuming that as long as the disk is both active and
system, formatting it isn't even an option. any way to remove those
attributes?

You have to make the C: drive the system partition, which means you
have to set the BIOS to boot from the SATA disk, and you have to place
the Vista boot files on the partition.

To do the former, go into BIOS setup and move the SATA disk to the top
of the list in Hard Disk Boot Priority (Award) or Hard Disk Drives
(AMI). Then try booting the computer; if it fails then it's set to
boot from the SATA disk drive.

To do the latter, follow steps 2 through 15 at