[pizzaisgood14]

i just got a new 320 gb western digital hard drive for backup purposes and decided to try windows 7 on it first. now that im done with trying windows 7 i tried to reformat just by right clicking and clicking format. but windows 7 setup a partition and made a system volume drive and then made a 100mb system reserved partition . when i reformatted the system volume drive i figured it would delete the partition and make it one whole drive but it didn't. so now i have a 297gb reformatted drive and a 100mb partition with 25mb used even though there's nothing there. How do i get rid of the second partition. Is the hard drive safe to use by just leaving it there. should i also reformat the 100mb partition

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[SnyperTodd]

Pizza, you should be able to delete them from within your default OS, but if it's hidden or something, you may not be able to. If not, if you boot from your Win7 disc, you should be able to go in and delete all of the partitions without installing the OS. Whichever way you can do it, I would recommend deleting all of the partitions so the drive is nothing but unallocated space, and doing a quick format on the whole thing. It won't hurt anything to run it like it is, but why not have all of the space you paid for?

[pizzaisgood14]

SnyperTodd, on 10 September 2009 - 06:39 PM, said:

Pizza, you should be able to delete them from within your default OS, but if it's hidden or something, you may not be able to. If not, if you boot from your Win7 disc, you should be able to go in and delete all of the partitions without installing the OS. Whichever way you can do it, I would recommend deleting all of the partitions so the drive is nothing but unallocated space, and doing a quick format on the whole thing. It won't hurt anything to run it like it is, but why not have all of the space you paid for?

i tried copying my files to the backup drive and it worked excellent so i think im just going to leave it as it is for now. The other partition is only 100mb anyway. If it wont hurt anything i think ill be ok. thanks for the responce. i was more concerned if it was going to screw something up.

SnyperTodd, on 10 September 2009 - 06:39 PM, said:

Pizza, you should be able to delete them from within your default OS, but if it's hidden or something, you may not be able to. If not, if you boot from your Win7 disc, you should be able to go in and delete all of the partitions without installing the OS. Whichever way you can do it, I would recommend deleting all of the partitions so the drive is nothing but unallocated space, and doing a quick format on the whole thing. It won't hurt anything to run it like it is, but why not have all of the space you paid for?

if i decided to delete it how do you do it in widows xp. When i right click on the partition there is no delete option

[mphenterprises]

pizzaisgood14, on 10 September 2009 - 05:41 PM, said:

How do i get rid of the second partition. Is the hard drive safe to use by just leaving it there. should i also reformat the 100mb partition

Hi Pizza. As SnyperTodd mentioned, the hard drive is in no eminent danger if used as is. However, 100MBs is 100MBs. That is space you could use for other purposes. Since I have not used Windows 7 yet, I cannot tell you if there is anything specific you should do besides what is already available standard within Windows.

However, if what Windows offers does not delete the partition, you could use GParted Live CD to merge the 100MB partition into the 297GB partition. The hyperlink is a direct download from the GParted vendor itself. It's an .iso file. Once you have download the .iso file, burn it to a CD and then boot to that CD. The rest of the process is pretty much self-explanatory.

[coastie65]

Hmmm, A 350 GB Hdd for back up purposes and 100 Mb has been partitioned with 25 Mb used. I wouldn't be too concerned. I have a 200 Mb Hdd in here and a load of games and stuff and still have 73% free space available. I don't think you are in danger of running out of storage.

[mphenterprises]

coastie65, on 11 September 2009 - 05:51 AM, said:

I don't think you are in danger of running out of storage.

Hi Coastie. It's the prinicipal of the matter. I mean I have over 4 Terabytes of hard drive space and I want every bit of hard drive space available to me.

[pizzaisgood14]

coastie65, on 11 September 2009 - 05:51 AM, said:

Hmmm, A 350 GB Hdd for back up purposes and 100 Mb has been partitioned with 25 Mb used. I wouldn't be too concerned. I have a 200 Mb Hdd in here and a load of games and stuff and still have 73% free space available. I don't think you are in danger of running out of storage.

I definitely have a over abundance of storage but hard drives or so cheap a 320gb drive only costs 50 and is a better deal then an 80 for 38 bucks. I just backed up everything on my computer and i came to 50gbs of the 320!