formating a Hard drive

I have a laptop with 2 hard drives and a widows vista as OS. I wanna know how to format the secondary Hard drive? do i need a specific software to do it? what is it?

 

Go into disk management and format from there.

Right click on My Computer > Click Manage > Click Disk Management

Now right click on second hard drive and select to format.

 

Appreciate your Help.

 

No problemo!

 

Sorry, it didn't work.it says windows cannot format the system partition on this disk. Any other proposal? Again i have windows vista ultimate.

 

Sounds like it may be corrupt - that should have worked. When is the last time you used that drive? What file system are you trying to format it as?

I would try booting from the Vista cd and formating the extra hard drive partition from there. Make sure you don't format the drive with the OS!

 

here is the situation:I just bought the laptop,its an Ispiron1720, it came with one hard drive of 160Gb and a spanish windows vista ultimate as OS. I bought an other HDD of 160Gb and installed a Windows vista ultimate(english)in it. Now i have 2 HDD with 2 OS in each one.The reason for having 2 OS is because when I tried to format or then to delete the old OS via the bootable DVD of the new Windows Vista like you told me, the puter doesnt boot through the new OS any more so I had to install the new OS again on the other HDD partion.Now my laptop is with 2 separate HDD and 2 windows vista in each one of them,What do I need to do to get rid of one of the OS. Sorry if it was too long and i would apreciate ur help.

 

I told you not to delete your partition with the OS.

When you boot to the OS, make sure you are formating the right hard drive by looking at the partitions. They should both be formated according to their size I'm guessing. Go look in the disk management utility so that you know which one is which. You will know this by looking at the partition size. Whatever you have your OS installed on, make sure you write down those numbers.

It might look something like this:



C: being your hard drive with Vista on it, that you want to keep - DON'T FORMAT! And the second un-partitioned space will actually be the second hard drive you have. Yours will probably have a partition though because you said there is a second OS on it. This is the one you want to format, but don't actually install the OS on it.