Can't delete partition XP Pro

A

alanack

I have a hard drive I used some time ago to back up my system with, which I now want to add simply for storage. It won't let me delete the partition containing the operating system, hence I am unable to reformat it. Windows states "you cannot delete the system volume, boot volume, or any volume that contains the active paging file or crash dump(memory dump)." I'm sure there's a way to do this, but I just haven't been able to figure it out by my searching. Thanks in advance for any help...
 
Quote from alanack:

I have a hard drive I used some time ago to back up my system with, which I now want to add simply for storage. It won't let me delete the partition containing the operating system, hence I am unable to reformat it. Windows states "you cannot delete the system volume, boot volume, or any volume that contains the active paging file or crash dump(memory dump)." I'm sure there's a way to do this, but I just haven't been able to figure it out by my searching. Thanks in advance for any help...
More...

1. Mount the 2nd HDD as the D: drive
2. Run a Low Level Format utility on D:
3. Partition D: for storage.
 
I used the free version of Killdisc a while back to erase a hidden recovery partition on a HDD that Windows XP couldn't deal with. I recall creating a boot CD with Killdisc on it, so that way Windows didn't start.
 
I had the same problem. I tried quick format, regular format, formatting from Win XP disk, removing partitions etc. After 6 hours of different attempts inside and outside the case with every seggestion I could find online, I over wrote the blank sections with CCleaner "wipe free space" and bought a new drive for $50. Tossed the old one in the trash. Was not worth my time.
 
Quote from WinstonTJ:

What brand of HDD is it?
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Whatever brand it is it will have a disk utility on the manufacturer's website (like how seagate has seatools). Just download that and install - zero write your disk and you will be good to go... WD has one, Fijitsu and Hatachi also
 
try a elevated command prompt and the diskpart command.

log in as administrator

>diskpart
>list disk
>select disk #
>clean
>exit
 
Thanks for all the replies, I haven't really had a chance to look at them yet... so any additional ideas would still be appreciated. The second drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9.
 
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