formatting extra drive - C

I added a larger drive - E, and, using that manufacturer's software (Seagate) had the vista os and everything else moved to the new drive E. I would like to erase the old drive, which still has all the old stuff on it including Windows, to use strictly for backups. Formatting won't work as it detects the old Windows. What would you suggest that I use? I don't want to accidentally wipe out the new drive and am unfamiliar with with programs that could erase a drive. Note that I am not looking for a 'secure erase' as if I were to be discarding the old drive.

If you boot from the OS install CD, you can format, you will be given that option.

Thanks, I have the OS installation disk. Will it ask me which drive I want to format? I am concerned that it will format the e drive which is the one that I want to keep.

It will most likely format the entire Hard Drive.

Vistuser64 said:

Thanks, I have the OS installation disk. Will it ask me which drive I want to format? I am concerned that it will format the e drive which is the one that I want to keep.

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Hi Vistuser64,

It displays all the drives, select the one that needs to be formatted (ie.., drive letter) when windows installation would start
.
Please use the following link for detailed instructions to install windows vista, it shows the screenshot of drive letter which you want to format:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117366-clean-install-full-version-vista.html

Please post back with the results.

The old drive has a partition marked active, depending on your bios boot order, you may find the bcd store on that active partition is live.

I am not very knowledgeable about computers so please bear with me. My new drive E has all it needs to operate the computer as I tested it by physically disconnecting my old C drive to test it and everything works. The old c drive still has a copy of the OS on it. All I want to do is wipe that drive clean somehow, and use it for backups. Now, I disconnected the new drive E as a precaution and launched the installation disk. This seem to indicated it that it would a complete reinstallation of Vista on the old drive C which is not what I want. So I cancelled, but did find the command prompt for c drive. I tried to use the format command but got the message 'Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Format may run if volume is dismounted first' and was offered a yes/no option. I cancelled since I was unsure what it meant.

Using Vista reinstallation seems complicated to me. Is there not a 'drive wiper' out there that I could download, burn to a CD, and use? I would disconnect the E drive first as a precaution before launching the wiping process. Somewhat suggested downloading EASEUS as a wiper but from what I can tell, it does not have wipe function so have not done it.

Thanks for your patience

Hi,

We can try few troubleshooting steps to check if the issue gets resolved:

1. We can change the Boot Sequence and make larger hard drive as first boot device.
2. Safe changes and restart the computer, then go to disk management and format the C drive. Please use the following link for detailed instructions for formatting C drive: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/95418-disk-management-delete-extend.html

For any further questions in future please feel free to contact me.