Deleting a Windows 7 drive

Feasty · World Chat Champion Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Karma :

So I've got an old hard drive that's got Windows 7 on it, and I want to use it as a backup drive instead since I've now got a new hard drive with Windows 7 installed.
However no matter what I try the bloody thing just won't give me permission to delete anything! I've tried deleting, formatting, searching the web but I'm not finding anything that works.

Anyone any ideas please? I just want a blank drive... Crying or Very sad

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T1z3R · World Chat Champion Joined: 23 Oct 2005 Karma :

you can either take ownership of the documents and settings folder etc to allow you to delete/format it or you can boot from a ubuntu installation disc and use Gparted to wipe the drive.
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duck my sick!

Feasty · World Chat Champion Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Karma :

T1z3R · World Chat Champion Joined: 23 Oct 2005 Karma :

google
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duck my sick!

Feasty · World Chat Champion Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Karma :

Frost · World Chat Champion Joined: 26 May 2004 Karma :

Unplug your main drive so you can't accidentally format it. Plug in the drive you want to blank, change BIOS to boot from CD, boot from a Windows / Linux disk and format it from there.

Thats why i always do, but then i have a stack of linux live CD's kicking about so it's usually the quickest way Laughing

Colin Edwards · Brolly Dolly Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Karma :

.Cant you just add the drive as a slave and then use computer manager (disk manager) to delete the partition and then recreate it?

Colin

GhostRider · World Chat Champion Joined: 31 Jan 2008 Karma :

The Artist · Super Spammer Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Karma :

You won't be able to just take ownership of windows 7 files. It is set up so n00bs don't delete their OS.

Best bet is booting off a linux live CD with just the old HD in your pc and formatting it.

Colin Edwards · Brolly Dolly Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Karma :

Its to be used as a backup drive suggesting there is a new main drive.
Connect the backup drive as a slave. (you will need to anyway if its a backup drive)
Open the Disk manager (in computer manager)
Remove and recreate the partition (s).

You cant delete the wrong drive as it will stop you..

Colin

Phoenix · Twisted Firestarter Joined: 01 Aug 2002 Karma :

What above said, if you try manually deleting files then windows looks at what it is you're deleting. If you format a drive either with the shell command or computer management tools then it's indiscriminate and will blank the lot regardless of whether it's got a Windows installation on. Windows format sucks in my opinion though, i'd rather use a boot up format and partition program for a hard drive than do it from inside windows.