Formatting my extra HDD

konam4 · 1 Oct 2008 at 21:16

Hey guys, I have just finished installing Vista onto a fresh raid 0 and now want to format the hard drive i have just finished with in order to use it as extra storage.

I go to my computer, right click the drive and format but it won't let me do it.

What should i do?

fobose · 1 Oct 2008 at 21:20

What does it say when you try to format?

bledd · 1 Oct 2008 at 22:10

do it in disk management

it's not your boot drive or anything daft is it?

konam4 · 2 Oct 2008 at 12:47

No but it does have a copy of windows on it...

rpstewart · 2 Oct 2008 at 13:10

bledd. said:
it's not your boot drive or anything daft is it?

I was thinking that myself.

Konam4: Was the single drive attached to the PC while you installed Vista?

EDIT: If you look in disk management it should tell you whether each partition is performing a special role in the system - Boot, System, Swapfile etc. What does it say about your single disk?

bledd · 2 Oct 2008 at 13:17

yup

click start, type

diskmgmt.msc

go to it, and fiddle around in there

konam4 · 2 Oct 2008 at 13:59

Ok guys thanks a lot, i'll givr you a shout when i get home and have a chance

bledd · 2 Oct 2008 at 14:30

if it says the old drive is currently (boot) or (system), don't format it..

ie..

C: is the only one needed here..

incase of confusion...

i added the 'safe to remove' text

konam4 · 2 Oct 2008 at 14:46

Thanks mate

konam4 · 2 Oct 2008 at 18:13

I think you have saved my arse bledd! Thanks a lot mate. Basically, Vista had installed system and something else onto my old hdd and the rest onto my raid.... god knows why

So delted the raid, rebuilt it. removed the other hdd etc and now i am finally running on a stable FAST vista

konam4 · 2 Oct 2008 at 21:07

So i just keep blue screening on every boot up, no matter what Hdd i install vista onto

I have reset the bios and everything...... wich me luck...

bledd · 3 Oct 2008 at 09:21

only have the raid connected, then install vista sp1 (if you have 4gb and don't have an sp1 disc, then remove some ram until you've installed sp1 and updated)

konam4 · 3 Oct 2008 at 11:13

I've given up on the raid for now because i wanted my pc back

SO i'll get it done in the next few weeks, i'll probably get my highly knowledgable friend to do it for me because i think i am just making an obvious mistake somewhere