Format system drive?

iviv · 24 Oct 2009 at 20:06

I've been shuffling stuff around my hard drives so I can format the old windows installs from them that were just taking up space, and I couldn't delete them. So the easiest thing would just be to format them. But when I look at one of the drives in the computer management screen, its showing as 'System, Active and Primary partiton'.
Now, all my drives are primary partition so that's no problem, but I can't format it because its a system drive? What can I do to get rid of it so I can start dumping stuff back onto it?

Thanks!

COYS · 24 Oct 2009 at 20:08

Are you trying to format the drive that you have loaded windows from?

iviv · 24 Oct 2009 at 20:19

Nope, I'm running windows 7 on the C:\
I'll screenshot for ease:

C: has win 7 on, D: has XP, which I want to format, the E: was formatted yesterday, and the F and G: have vista on, but too much crud on them to move around and format them.

ns400r · 24 Oct 2009 at 20:39

Looks like D was the first drive you installed Windows XP onto, followed by a dual boot of 7 on the C drive. The D drive will contain the bootloader information for both drives so you can't just format it as the system won't boot properly afterwards.

iviv · 24 Oct 2009 at 20:50

But the C: is listed as the boot drive?

That said, something I did notice was that I used easyBCD to clear up my bootup list before installing 7, so it just booted right to vista and the other installs didn't show up, and it was fine. But after installing 7 I'm getting the choice between that, the Vista install I was on before, and the 'older version of windows' which I'm assuming is XP, so there must be something there to bring that back, but not the other vista drive I don't use any more.

Anyway, if it is something being stored on that drive, how do I transfer it over? There's got to be a way, I don't want to be stuck with an unformattable drive XD

iviv · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:37

Can anyone else shed some light on the situation?

tripitaka · 25 Oct 2009 at 13:03

In Windows terminology, the boot drive is the drive that contains the operating system - so when you are in Windows 7 the C: is the boot partition.
However, the system partition is what actually contains the bootloader - which in your case appears to be the D: - if this was to be formatted then it would no longer be possible for you to boot Windows 7.
If C: and D: are separate physical drives, then you could try disconnecting D: and then booting of the Windows DVD to repair - it should then be able to write the boot info to the C: - I've never tried this with Windows 7 mind you, but had to do it with XP and Vista in the past.