Remove old 'System Reserved' Partition from Seconday HDD

[RichDAdams]

On my system I used to just have my 500GB SATA HDD which has a 100MB system reserved partition.

I have just installed a SSD and with it Windows 8.1 Pro.

However, Disk Management cannot delete the partition that is left on my SATA HDD and I believe that that is causing my PC to give me boot options between the two HDDs because I have formatted the main partition where all the storage is on the drive so I can't imaging it will actually boot into windows if I choose the other drive.

My main question is, how do I delete this 100MB system reserved partition? Or format the entire drive? Since Windows can only format the 465.66GB partition.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

What's causing your PC to give you two boot options is because you installed Windows on your new SSD whilst the existing OS (on your HDD) was still connected to the system. Windows 8 Setup has therefore configured your system for dual-booting.

You should have disconnected the HDD before installing Windows on the SSD.

You can delete the 100MB System Reserved partition from the HDD by booting from a disk management CD which stops Windows from blocking what you are trying to do. Use this boot CD: http://www.partitionwizard.com/partition-wizard-bootable-cd.html

However, you will still get the dual-boot menu every time you boot your system. Removing that requires editing the BOOT.INI file, but I am not familiar with how that's done on Windows 8 as I have never seen that OS in action let alone used it.

 

[RichDAdams]

Thanks, that got rid of the partition. I stopped it from showing me the dual boot screen by going in to:
Right Click on 'This PC'
Properties
Advanced
Start-up and recovery
settings...
On this tab you can set the default operating system and unclick 'Time to display list of operating systems'

While this hasn't made the changed in the boot.ini file to remove the issue it has pushes it out of sight.

Since it has no impact on the performance that would be noticeable, out of sight is out of mind for me on this one 😀

Thanks for your help though Phillip, the partition would have annoyed me (for what good 100MB will do me in the future).

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

You're welcome. Glad you fixed the boot menu thing. Seems Microsoft made it easier than Windows 7.

Don't forget in future that, unless you want a dual-boot system. disconnect all HDD/SSD except the one you are installing the OS on.