Solved Can't remove or format a drive

DataAndroid

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Hello,
my c drive is starting to fill up, so I decided to move and reorganize some "stuff"
Everything went fine and I have a full backup on an external 3TB drive. I also have two separate 2 TB external drives and all is fine.

My last task, before moving/deleting all my pictures and videos (30.000 in total) off my c drive, was to format all my other internal drives and/or remove/upgrade them to bigger ones and this is where I ran into a problem.

I have win 8.1 with all service updates as of today. My computer specs are all in my info.

I want to remove the drive G: and replace it with a 2TB one, I deleted everything from the old drive, but when I removed it, I got a boot error.
What I found was, that the hidden files in the picture bellow are still on it and needed to boot.

How can I move these files onto my C: drive?

I found one tip, to use this command: bcdboot c:\windows /s c:
but it didn't change the fact that the computer doesn't boot without the G: drive attached.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Here is a picture of my drives.
interm_drive.jpg
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Build
    CPU
    I7 920 @ 4.2GHZ
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
    Memory
    6Gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    Geforce 970 GTX
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Benq 24' and Envision 22"
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200 and 1680X1050
    Hard Drives
    5 internal total with 3.3 TB and 3 external with a total of 6 TB
    PSU
    1000W
    Case
    Cooler Master
    Cooling
    Water cooled
    Keyboard
    Logitech G15
    Mouse
    MS Trackball & Logitech Touchpad
    Internet Speed
    18Mb down 3Mb up
    Browser
    IE 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
You can do this
Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Help Forums

Also make the C: drive = disk 0

That worked great, thank you very much!

interm_drive_2.jpg

how can I make the C: drive = disk 0? I tried to fiscally plug it into the other SATA connector on the MB, but that didn't do it. My MB has 10 SATA connectors, but only 2 of them are SATA 3 6Gb/s and none of them makes the C drive disk 0

Is it important to do or can I just leave it the way it is?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Build
    CPU
    I7 920 @ 4.2GHZ
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
    Memory
    6Gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    Geforce 970 GTX
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Benq 24' and Envision 22"
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200 and 1680X1050
    Hard Drives
    5 internal total with 3.3 TB and 3 external with a total of 6 TB
    PSU
    1000W
    Case
    Cooler Master
    Cooling
    Water cooled
    Keyboard
    Logitech G15
    Mouse
    MS Trackball & Logitech Touchpad
    Internet Speed
    18Mb down 3Mb up
    Browser
    IE 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
The drive number is assigned by the motherboard and you'd change them by swapping the cables. If your board is assigning IDE (or slower SATA) first and then you'll not get drive 0. I wouldn't worry about it - it is still the first bootable drive.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Pro Prieview x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    MacBook Pro Core2Duo
    CPU
    T7600
    Memory
    3
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Radeon X1600
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Internal
    Screen Resolution
    1440 x 800
    Hard Drives
    40GB
    Keyboard
    Apple
    Mouse
    Apple
    Internet Speed
    Varies
    Browser
    Various
    Antivirus
    Defender
You have System and Boot on C:, but G: is still active - C: needs to be made active.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP COMPAQ Presario CQ57
    CPU
    AMD E- 300 APU with Radion HD Graphics 1.30GHz
    Motherboard
    inbuilt
    Memory
    4GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI
    Sound Card
    High Definition Audio on-board
    Monitor(s) Displays
    notebook
    Screen Resolution
    1366x768
    Hard Drives
    Seagate ST9500325AS
    Google drive 15GB
    Skydrive 25GB
    BT Cloud
    PSU
    external 20v
    Case
    Laptop
    Cooling
    pretty good
    Keyboard
    inbuilt
    Mouse
    touchpad
    Internet Speed
    BT Infinity Unlimited - 80 up 20 down =70/16 really
    Browser
    Chrome Canary usually
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender and Malwarebytes
    Other Info
    no Start menu modifications
    Upgraded with no issues to 8.0 and to 8.1
I found one tip, to use this command: bcdboot c:\windows /s c:
but it didn't change the fact that the computer doesn't boot without the G: drive attached.
Since the boot files need to be in an active partition, all you needed to do was mark the C: partition active, the bcdboot command was fine. However, you may need to re-register your recovery system. Run the command reagentc /info in an administrative command prompt and it will show if it is set up correctly.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Build
    CPU
    I7 920 @ 4.2GHZ
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
    Memory
    6Gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    Geforce 970 GTX
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Benq 24' and Envision 22"
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200 and 1680X1050
    Hard Drives
    5 internal total with 3.3 TB and 3 external with a total of 6 TB
    PSU
    1000W
    Case
    Cooler Master
    Cooling
    Water cooled
    Keyboard
    Logitech G15
    Mouse
    MS Trackball & Logitech Touchpad
    Internet Speed
    18Mb down 3Mb up
    Browser
    IE 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
You are welcome. :dinesh:
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
Run the command reagentc /info in an administrative command prompt and it will show if it is set up correctly.

OK, did that.
Here is the result:

reagentc.jpg
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Build
    CPU
    I7 920 @ 4.2GHZ
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
    Memory
    6Gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    Geforce 970 GTX
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Benq 24' and Envision 22"
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200 and 1680X1050
    Hard Drives
    5 internal total with 3.3 TB and 3 external with a total of 6 TB
    PSU
    1000W
    Case
    Cooler Master
    Cooling
    Water cooled
    Keyboard
    Logitech G15
    Mouse
    MS Trackball & Logitech Touchpad
    Internet Speed
    18Mb down 3Mb up
    Browser
    IE 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
OK, did that.
Here is the result:
Looks OK since it appears the C: drive is Hard Disk 3.

EasyBCD did not change the recovery options in the past. Assuming the hidden system folder, Recovery, was on the G: drive originally, I will have to check it again and re-evaluate its capabilities.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
I posted and then deleted this comment as there were replies after but I'll put it back so you can think about it after you've solved your immediate problem :)

Why not define your non-boot drives in Storage Spaces or something like that? There is no reason really to tie specific address space to physical hardware (unless you want to of course). You have a lot of disks with seemingly separate data. It is not my place to recommend it but it might be interesting for you to consider. It would save copying things around all the time.

In my particular situation the servers I work on I can't tell even theoretically what drive data is on or even whether it is in memory or on disk. I quite like that model.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Pro Prieview x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    MacBook Pro Core2Duo
    CPU
    T7600
    Memory
    3
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Radeon X1600
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Internal
    Screen Resolution
    1440 x 800
    Hard Drives
    40GB
    Keyboard
    Apple
    Mouse
    Apple
    Internet Speed
    Varies
    Browser
    Various
    Antivirus
    Defender
Why not define your non-boot drives in Storage Spaces or something like that?

Some time ago I looked into RAID, but didn't like it (was all too complicated to get to work etc.). I assume this is something similar, but rather software controlled instead hardware?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Build
    CPU
    I7 920 @ 4.2GHZ
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
    Memory
    6Gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    Geforce 970 GTX
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Benq 24' and Envision 22"
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200 and 1680X1050
    Hard Drives
    5 internal total with 3.3 TB and 3 external with a total of 6 TB
    PSU
    1000W
    Case
    Cooler Master
    Cooling
    Water cooled
    Keyboard
    Logitech G15
    Mouse
    MS Trackball & Logitech Touchpad
    Internet Speed
    18Mb down 3Mb up
    Browser
    IE 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
Yes it is. Storage spaces are software based and so slower than a hardware based RAID but you can add and remove drives as you wish. It doesn't use much extra CPU for reads. For things that are not IO demanding (like movies, photos and music) it would be good. It is also pretty simple.

For games I don't know. You may want to specify a separate SSD for them specifically. It depends if you are feeling constrained by your CPUs not being given enough info to process or not. If your CPU is not running at 100% you need more or faster disk (or possibly memory - it is always one of the three - CPU, memory or IO).


If you are looking for maximum performance though forget storage spaces - it is for home use.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Pro Prieview x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    MacBook Pro Core2Duo
    CPU
    T7600
    Memory
    3
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Radeon X1600
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Internal
    Screen Resolution
    1440 x 800
    Hard Drives
    40GB
    Keyboard
    Apple
    Mouse
    Apple
    Internet Speed
    Varies
    Browser
    Various
    Antivirus
    Defender
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