I need to format one of my HDDs only Windows won't let me. I basically need to know if/how I can change the "system" notation on my HDD. Quick history... this drive was selected as an install drive by mistake a few installs ago, that install was never finished... but not before Vista placed the "system" notation on the HDD. Up until today I haven't had a need to format it since that first mistake. Vista has been reinstalled a few times since then onto the correct drive so I'm not worried about Vista being "broken" by this format. Basically... I just want to remove the "system" note from the HDD so that Vista will simply format the drive. I'd prefer not to run this through a bootdisk, but will if needed. I've used disk managment and the registry before so fire away at a quick solution. thanks, TK.

Basicly you can't. You have system files on the second drive so Vista won't format it, you can't remove them because Vista won't boot. Use a boot disk to format the second drive to get rid of the system files(disconnect the Vista drive so you don't format the wrong drive). Reinstall Vista with the second drive disconnected, then reconnect.

I think you misunderstood. Vista doesn't use this drive to boot... the system files were placed there around 3 installs ago when I picked that drive as the install drive by mistake. Since then Vista has been installed cleanly around 3 more times so I know the drive is safe to format. Only Vista doesn't. At any rate, I used a free version of a program called Killdisk... this did what I wanted through Vista... although it wrote zeros to the whole drive and took an hour. Either way, problem solved.... kinda. I assume there's still a faster away to do what I was asking so I'd still like to hear it if possible. TK.

well... in the mean time I found a faster way with Killdisk... I ran it for 3min, then stopped the process... this killed the disk enough to then use disk managment to reload the disk and then format it quickly. ;)

if you want something which is eve more fast try this solution which lets you format your HD without using Vista disk management modify create or delete partition when disk management does not work WebMaster of www.webtlk.com