Question Cannot format 2nd hard drive

[Blueskii55]

Hello, long time lurker, first time poster here ; forgive me if this thread seems redundant, but I have done a lot of reading and researching on similar threads and cannot seem to solve this problem.

I have two hard drives connected to my pc, C: and F: . I am running Windows 7 Pro on C:, and Windows 7 on F: . I want to format F:, which I have already backed up to C: . I have tried formatting with disk management, command prompt, and have done startup repair the with Win 7 disk and then redid the process.

When I tried to format through Properties to begin with, it says the disk is in use. Could this be because I backed it up to C: with the same folder name?? Am I running two os at the same time? I cannot even delete the Windows files off drive F:, and I am at a loss. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

 

[Lutfij]

Seems to me that the OS you're running off of, as of now, is the OS you installed on F:

Might I ask why you have two versions of the same OS on two drives? It's best if you were on one version and using one partition as the OS alone. The rest would be ideally used for storage.

 

[Blueskii55]

I was given a bunch of random computer parts and I honestly I've just been experimenting with it all. The hard drives all have an os installed. The C: is 1tb, and F: is 500 gb. I had previously reinstalled Windows on C:, but I guess the priority is F: because it was the original.

So my question is still how to format F: for a new reinstall, so that I can use dually use my 1tb with another 500gb for installs while F: runs paging files and such.

 

[Blueskii55]

After two days, I finally got it. I booted from cd/DVD drive and formatted the drive through the Windows disk. Then right after it started installing I cancelled. I then booted from my C: drive and was able to format F: normally through Properties.