Windows Unable to Complete Format - Win7 Q

I installed a new hard drive with Windows 7 and have the old hard drive still in place with Vista files.

I am trying to format the old Vista drive, and I keep getting an unable to format.
I want no remnants of that drive, and want to reformat and use it for storage.

Everytime I turn on my computer, I get asked if I want to start with Vista or Win7.

How do I get Vista and all data of the drive off my computer and just have my main Win7 drive run the show?

D: - Win 7
E: - Vista
L & C: External HD's



Appreciate your help

Jay

 

In my opinion, download the Gparted linux live cd image and boot that, it can format anything.

• Download .iso file (direct link)
• Burn image to cd (win7 can do this), or use unetbootin or linuxliveusb to put the image on a flash drive.
• boot flash drive into gparted linux environment, run the gparted utility.
• Figure out which drive is your vista drive based on the size of it.
• Format it to NTFS.
• shutdown and boot back into win7.

note: be careful you don't wipe the wrong drive. gparted is not forgiving.

 

thanks for the help, i don't understand why it is necessary to download anything to simply reformat the entire drive though?
what else can I do, i Just want to reformat the drive directly, no downloads or programs if possible

 

S.Prime's suggestions is excellent, you could also do a full image backup to an external hard drive, use this How To Format C From a Windows Setup Disc, then restore only the win 7 OS from the image backup; but using the Linux CD would also be my first choice

 

hahah lol i ran into this problem on my computer....but i installed win 8 on a different partition of the same hard drive that my win 7 was in. so when i go and try to reformat that win 7 partition, it wont let me. so i insert the OS installation disk and reformat the partition that way. but after that my computer won't even any see OS to boot from (though my win 8 partition was still there)....so i was thinking "damn, win 7 was tied to the boot somehow". so i was forced to do a fresh install of win 8 again.

try this....

1. Unplug your E: hard drive....Restart "see if your computer will boot into win 7"

2. if it doesn't, then that's why the computer won't let you format that, because vista is tied to the boot somehow.

3. if it does boot into win 7. plug your hard drive back in, then insert any OS installation disk (or one you made from ISO), then boot from optical drive, go through the process to where it asks you to where you want to install the OS.
in this window you can delete and reformat any hard drive...then just cancel the installation process. BAAM your drive has been formatted.

before you do step 3....move any data you want out of the E: drive first