Deactivating a partition

Question

I built a new system with a new SATA hard drive. I added the IDE drive from my old system for extra storage space and to transfer data to the new system. The old drive has two partitions. It had been an add-on to the old system, so it was never the system disk--only data.

Initially, one of the partitions did not show up in Windows Explorer at all; I had to add it manually. When I looked in Computer Management, that partition was marked active. I don't know if that could cause problems, but I read that you should never have an active partition that did not have an operating system. I don't know if it is related, but my computer occasionally reports a non-system disk when it is booting. If I restart it boots normally.

I see an option to Mark Partition as Active, but no option to deactivate the partition. The option to Delete Volume is grayed out also, only for that one partition. There are two folders on the partition, named 4518e8c68d4a5b16ec790d8801df and c8b61e7eff00dcc134, that I cannot delete. I suspect that those are the reasons I can't delete the volume. Searching online, I found that the folders are most likely remnants from a Windows XP update.

The computer runs OK as is. Should I just leave it that way, or is there a way to delete those two folders and deactivate or delete the partition?

Answer 1

<Cliffskier> wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...

Actually, it's not as simple as I thought. I was just looking at my BIOS setup and discovered that it is indeed using the old drive as the system disk. I guess I should have waited until I had Windows 7 installed on the new drive before putting in the old one.

Not exactly the setup I wanted. I really would have preferred to have the OS installed on the new drive. I thought I took precautions to make that happen. Now what do I do? Is there a simple way to fix it, short of starting over?

Not that I'm aware of, but someone else may have a solution. Sorry :-(

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SC Tom

Answer 2

This is a problem Ive had. I had a 1TB drive as the main drive, big mistake, had a monster Master Boot Record and so was slow as ****. Bought a new 250GB Sata III drive for the main drive and stuck the former drive in as a storage only drive. Now on the Disk Management screen it shows one of the 2 partitions I split it into, one 750GB one 250GB as active. This has caused some major permission issues when it came to sharing files as the BOOT information hadnt cleared off the drive. Only cure, shift all the files you can off the drive using copy NOT cut and paste them to spare space, old IDE or sata drives you have lying round then use either disk management or a partitioning tool such as partition wizard home edition ( freeware ) to junk ALL partition info off the drive and then delete the first 5% of the drive using the fill with zero's option. This wipes the old boot sector and the old MBR off the disk. Then just make the new partitions and copy your files back onto it. Timely and cheap but it does the trick. The other reason why this can happen is if youve used the drive for putting a dual boot sysstem on it at some point for say Ubuntu and windows. Pain in the rear end but you can save most of the files if not all of them without any major sweat. If you need all the files I would suggest using a Ubuntu SYSTEM CD so the system is handled by the CD then go into the folders on the duff drive and shift them using linux. Again its a time consuming process but it works. Again once its done, use a partition tool and create a non boot NTFS partition. Saving old drives does pay off in the end even if they only help you out on problems like this. Ive tried a few shortcut methods but this ones the only one that actually works 100%. Hope this helps out anyone with the same troubles.

Answer 3

Actually, it's not as simple as I thought. I was just looking at my BIOS setup and discovered that it is indeed using the old drive as the system disk. I guess I should have waited until I had Windows 7 installed on the new drive before putting in the old one.

Not exactly the setup I wanted. I really would have preferred to have the OS installed on the new drive. I thought I took precautions to make that happen. Now what do I do? Is there a simple way to fix it, short of starting over?

Answer 4

The second drive is going to show as Active, but not System. I believe it has to Active to be seen/used.

If you're trying to make the whole drive a single partition, you can use one of the freebies out there if Disk Management isn't working for you. One of the ones I like is Easeus Partition Managerhttp://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm .

It works with any 32-bit Windows form W2K through Win7. The paid version will work for all versions. There are some free ones for 64-bit I'm sure, but since I'm running 32-bit, I really haven't checked them out.

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SC Tom