Won't let me format old drive

RollerBall · 15 Dec 2011 at 01:43

I installed my old windows XP drive and a new SSD into my new PC about a month ago.

I booted off XP initially to check if everything was working before I bought win 7. I then put windows 7 on the SSD and primary boot off that and everything is fine.

Decided to take stuff off my D drive and reformat it so I can start using it properly (still had all my old junk on it) and set up re-directions in 7 etc however it won't let me format it. It comes up with the error "Windows cannot format the system partition on this disk".

I've attached a picture of my disk management below. Any help?

stoke1863 · 15 Dec 2011 at 01:49

windows disk managment = yuck

i had this problem and someone from here recommended using the live CD of GParted

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

that formated my drive no problems

Davefran · 15 Dec 2011 at 01:56

Did you have D: drive plugged in when you installed Win 7 on the SSD ?

RollerBall · 15 Dec 2011 at 02:07

Davefran said:
Did you have D: drive plugged in when you installed Win 7 on the SSD ?

I believe so. It wasn't selected in any part of the installation though. Everything went onto my SSD without any partitions or anything.

Davefran · 15 Dec 2011 at 02:14

You should only have the SSD plugged in when installing Windows, it may have put system files on D: that's why it won't let you format it.

RollerBall · 15 Dec 2011 at 02:40

Davefran said:
You should only have the SSD plugged in when installing Windows, it may have put system files on D: that's why it won't let you format it.

Why would it have done that? I booted from USB and selected/formated and installed to the SSD. That would be a remarkably stupid installer to ask you which drive then ignore you and spread it across both.

CaptainCrash · 15 Dec 2011 at 09:39

Try running diskpart (from an elevated command prompt)

diskpart

list disk (Lists all physical HDDs, make a note of the number which corresponds to your 'D' drive)

select disk # (where # is the disk number)

clean

exit

You should then be able to initialise, partition and format the drive in Disk Management in the normal way.

Needless to say, this is one of those situations where the old saying "measure twice, cut once" is particularly relevant.

Davefran · 15 Dec 2011 at 10:21

RollerBall said:
Why would it have done that? I booted from USB and selected/formated and installed to the SSD. That would be a remarkably stupid installer to ask you which drive then ignore you and spread it across both.

Can happen, that's why you should only have the SSD plugged in when installing.(We are talking about Microsoft here lol

)

RollerBall · 15 Dec 2011 at 20:58

So I managed to format it and it says the boot manager is missing when I tried to turn my computer on again.

When I put my USB stick with the windows 7 installer on it and click repair it can't find anything. It says there's a problem startup so I hit repair and restart.

Unfortunately it comes up with "Failed to save startup operations". I really don't want to have to do a reformat, is there anyway I sort this out normally? I ran a command prompt and chkdsk and it came up with only the information of my USB stick. If I click on startup repair and select OS/HDD there's nothing there. From what I gather it's not finding my windows installation on the SSD.

Orcvader · 15 Dec 2011 at 21:11

RollerBall said:
Why would it have done that? I booted from USB and selected/formated and installed to the SSD. That would be a remarkably stupid installer to ask you which drive then ignore you and spread it across both.

It happened to me. Windows stupidly placed some of the boot files onto my second drive. So all I did was a fresh install of Windows again with only the boot drive connected to ensure all boot files stay on one drive.

RollerBall · 15 Dec 2011 at 21:42

Orcvader said:
It happened to me. Windows stupidly placed some of the boot files onto my second drive. So all I did was a fresh install of Windows again with only the boot drive connected to ensure all boot files stay on one drive.

That's such a PITA as it means I have to reformat again. What absolute moron designed that system.

marms · 15 Dec 2011 at 23:22

RollerBall said:
That's such a PITA as it means I have to reformat again. What absolute moron designed that system.

You installed windows on a computer with boot manager already on one of the hard drives, windows just left it where it already was. Then you format that drive and complain it doesn't work.

RollerBall · 15 Dec 2011 at 23:30

marms said:
You installed windows on a computer with boot manager already on one of the hard drives, windows just left it where it already was. Then you format that drive and complain it doesn't work.

I did a fresh install onto a HDD. Windows then decides to go through another HDD (not specified) to see the boot manager is already there and not bother to install?

How is that not a stupid system? Why even bother to select where to install if it's going to spread bits of it over each HDD?

EDIT: I fixed it regardless.