Deleting an unwanted OS Partition. 1

[BadChough]

It's me again, I'm afraid. I'm having a real go at sorting out my PC.
I originally installed XP and Windows7 on separate Partitions of the same disk, as a Dual boot system. I now no longer ever use XP and so have just removed it as an item from the Boot Menu, using EasyBCD. It now boots straight to Windows7. Great.
I now intend to reformat the XP Partition for storage space.
I have attached a screen shot of my Disk Management and my question is this:
Can I just go ahead and format the "WindowsXP" Partition, bearing in mind that it contains no data that I need, but that it is described here as "(System, Active, Primary Partition)"?

 

[gbaughma]

That has your MBR on it... deleting it would make your computer un-bootable.

The "safest" way would be to mirror your W7 partition, restore it to your boot partition, delete the W7 partition, resize the first partition.



Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

 

[vacunita]

Going by the image, it looks to me like the Boot partition is the Windows 7 partition. In which case formatting the Windows XP partition should affect nothing.

The XP partition just happens to be first on the drive, but does not have the boot info on it.

In any case, even if the boot files where on that partition a simple windows repair from the original install media should get it all back and running the way it was.



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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

 

[BadChough]

Well, with Vacunita's words of re-assurance I went to Disc Management to format the XP Partition, but found that Windows7 will not allow me to format either of the two OS Partitions. (Greyed out in the right-click list and the Actions/All Tasks options) Any tips?

 

[vacunita]

Windows 7 may lock the partitions if its using them for something. In reality, deleting the Windows XP directory in the partition should be all you need to do. You can if you want, use a Bootable CD-Rom with format tools and format the drive outside of Windows so its accessible.

However, unless you really want to change the format type of the partition (ie from FAT32 to NTFS or something like that), Deleting its contents should be all that is needed.


----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

 

[BadChough]

Yes, Vacunita, I hadn't thought of just deleting.
It's all done now, and without any booting issues.
There were a few remaining folders that Windows was reluctant to delete, but it's cleared a lot of space for storage, so I can live with that.
Thanks for your help.