Question Old HDD on new PC.

[HarryB281]

Hi everyone, i have taken an old hard drive from an old laptop and installed it into my current system with the idea of having more storage. However, once this HDD was installed and i booted my system, i noticed that it still had windows installed on it.

As far as i know this is not causing any conflicts on my PC however i cannot uninstall windows from the old HDD from my current system. I was wondering if there is a way to format a drive with windows on it through windows 10. This would not uninstall windows from my PC since i had a C drive with windows 10 on it and the newly installed drive is labeled "D: Windows".

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

Commandline function diskpart, and the clean command.

How to Diskpart Erase/Clean a Drive Through the Command Prompt | Seagate US

This article explains the Microsoft Diskpart Erase utility. The command that erases the drive during this process is "Clean". In this article "Clean" and erase are used interchangeably. Cleaning or erasing a storage device removes all data and partitions from the drive.

www.seagate.com

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10

Use diskpart to create, delete and modify disk partitions | TechTarget

Follow these step-by-step instructions to perform a successful diskpart delete partition operation among other disk-related jobs in Windows.

searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com

Be absolutely sure of which drive you are working with.

 

[DMAN999]

I would try formatting the D drive like this:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-format-new-hard-drive-windows-10

 

[HarryB281]

Hi guys, thanks for the advice, unfortunately im getting this error when i try to use the clean command in the cmd prompt


DISKPART> clean

Virtual Disk Service error:
Clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot,
system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume.


Thanks for the help!

 

[USAFRet]

Hi guys, thanks for the advice, unfortunately im getting this error when i try to use the clean command in the cmd prompt


DISKPART> clean

Virtual Disk Service error:
Clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot,
system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume.


Thanks for the help!

And that indicates you are selecting the wrong drive.
It is telling you you cannot 'clean' the drive where the current OS is booting from. Which is a GoodThing.

 

[HarryB281]

And that indicates you are selecting the wrong drive.
It is telling you you cannot 'clean' the drive where the current OS is booting from. Which is a GoodThing.

Ive checked my bios as well as MSCONFIG and both say that i am booting windows from my current SSD not the drive that i have just installed, i am definitely trying to run the clean command on the unused drive, i think its because it still has windows 10 installed on it even though im not using it to boot.

 

[HarryB281]

Ok, I made a huge mistake and deleted the partition on my secondary drive and apparently it has also deleted information from my boot drive. It is now not booting and showing “reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key” I’m panicking and I don’t know what to do....

 

[USAFRet]

Take out ALL drives except your original.
Power up.
Does it boot up?

 

[HarryB281]

Take out ALL drives except your original.
Power up.
Does it boot up?

Still no 😭 I’ve resorted to trying to restore it from an old backup using a windows installer USB

 

[Akala]

Format it on disk management. It may help you.