Removing Windows 7 from slave drive without formatting drive

[DaveLembke]

Trying to remove prior Win7 install from D: drive HDD when Win7 is now on C: SSD.

In the past I just formatted the drive and its clean.

My problem is that I have data and programs installed on D: that I do not want to completely wipe out, so the easy formatting is not going to work for me.

I was thinking of using Linux to remove Windows 7 from this D: drive to get the 17.8GB back. Is this the best method or is there a better method to get around the Access Denied issue when trying to remove when I am the System Admin and should be able to delete it, but cant?

[Allan]

If you are logged into Windows on your system partition and wish to remove a different Windows installation you should be able to do so after taking ownership. I always use this utility to add "take ownership" to the context menu: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/

[soybean]

If you have data and programs on the partition on that slave drive, why not create a separate partition and move the personal files you want to keep to it and then format the partition with Win 7 on it?  And, of course, if possible, backing up those data files to an external HD or flash drive or optical disc would be a good safety measure. 

[DaveLembke]

soybean wrote:

If you have data and programs on the partition on that slave drive, why not create a separate partition and move the personal files you want to keep to it and then format the partition with Win 7 on it?  And, of course, if possible, backing up those data files to an external HD or flash drive or optical disc would be a good safety measure. 

Yah I was going to go this route, but before doing so I realized that it was likely not going to be successful because I would run into the problem of files in use by Windows 7 of the C: install, since I told MSSE and other programs that run services to install to D:\program files instead of the default install. So instead of killing services and then moving the data to external. Then formatting drive clean, and then copying the data back, and then a reboot to bring the services up clean again and verify that all is well, I avoided this route.


Allan wrote:

If you are logged into Windows on your system partition and wish to remove a different Windows installation you should be able to do so after taking ownership. I always use this utility to add "take ownership" to the context menu: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/

This is probably the best method other than using Linux. I have used Linux in the past to blow away files that cant be removed by normal means such as malware files in temp folder etc, and while it works ok at deleting files, I have heard of issues with using Linux to remove NTFS files to where the file system can become corrupt, so its only in extreme situations that I resort to the Linux shotgun method to removal of files or folders. I'll give this a try when I get home from work.

Thanks everyone 

[Allan]

Just to be clear Dave, after taking ownership of the secondary Windows installation you would just delete it as you would any other folder. I'm guessing you know that, but no harm in saying it.

[DaveLembke]

Yup, already know that, but good to state in case anyone ever reads this on a google hit some day.