Remove windows from a drive?

[Helpful Tech Witch]

I have a hhd with a copy of windows on it, and I would like to remove it, as the drive would be nice from storage, and I can't get the boot order to change in the bios. Are there any ways to get the copy of windows off the drive, but still keep the files? I can manually chose the drive to boot from.

[bmx6454]

2 minutes ago, TheTechWizardThatNeedsHelp said:

I have a hhd with a copy of windows on it, and I would like to remove it, as the drive would be nice from storage, and I can't get the boot order to change in the bios. Are there any ways to get the copy of windows off the drive, but still keep the files? I can manually chose the drive to boot from.

you could manually delete all the windows files through file explorer.

would be cleaner to copy off what you want to keep, and format the drive, then move the files back if possible.

[Windows7ge]

You will need to manually select all the files you want to keep and copy them off the drive. Then you can perform a format and move those files back.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

 

You will need to manually select all the files you want to keep and copy them off the drive. Then you can perform a format and move those files back

 

That would be easier, but it's an old drive, and Boone has had the time to look through it and see if there is anything worth keeping. I don't find 2+ hours of digging through an hhd to be that fun.

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Um....... Well. The windows file has a few files.

[Windows7ge]

If it's Windows Vista or newer the most common folders in use would be any directory inside the user folder. Other than that chances are an average person won't have to search anywhere else.

 

It's also worth noting that if nobody knows if there's any worthwhile data on it then how can you know there's things you want to get off it? At that point I'd just wipe it and not even worry.

 

Who's install was it? Yours? A siblings? A parents?

 

I wouldn't expect that any good software exisits that would delete just Windows files cleanly without either leaving you still with a bunch of left over files or mistakenly deleting ones you wanted it to keep. This is really a manual process you would want to do yourself.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

I'm doing it myself. It was my dad's old install, and I'm talking about the actual windows folder on windows 10 it topped out at 273,165 files totaling 22.6gb. I'm keeping windows.old, and the other folders. Anything but windows.old that had windows in the name is now deleated. All other files are intact.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

More accurately it was the old family computer from like 10 years ago, when I was 2. It may have taxes on it ore something else. Also some programs may be ones that needed to be paid for, and need to be kept. Just a mess, so I'm incapacitating windows.

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, TheTechWizardThatNeedsHelp said:

I'm doing it myself. It was my dad's old install, and I'm talking about the actual windows folder on windows 10 it topped out at 273,165 files totaling 22.6gb. I'm keeping windows.old, and the other folders. Anything but windows.old that had windows in the name is now deleated. All other files are intact.

So it was upgraded at one time. Check the directory:

*:/Users/User_name/

In here will list Pictures, Music, Videos, Desktop, etc. The most common directories basic users would leave personal files.

 

Windows.old may also contain some data.

 

You can look in Program Files & Program Files (x86) but that will only really revieil anything if you're looking to recover application files.

 

You may also find some data under %appdata% but that's not as likely to be the case unless you know something you need is usually put there by Windows.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

9 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

 

16 minutes ago, TheTechWizardThatNeedsHelp said:

I'm doing it myself. It was my dad's old install, and I'm talking about the actual windows folder on windows 10 it topped out at 273,165 files totaling 22.6gb. I'm keeping windows.old, and the other folders. Anything but windows.old that had windows in the name is now deleated. All other files are intact.

So it was upgraded at one time. Check the directory:

*:/Users/User_name/

In here will list Pictures, Music, Videos, Desktop, etc. The most common directories basic users would leave personal files.

 

Windows.old may also contain some data.

 

You can look in Program Files & Program Files (x86) but that will only really revieil anything if you're looking to recover application files.

 

You may also find some data under %appdata% but that's not as likely to be the case unless you know something you need is usually put there by Windows

 

I upgraded it myself before we had an SSD to boot from all files are in windows.old. I'm just making it unbootable for now, I'll have my dad take a look and then format it later.

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Two things. One I turned it off and let it boot. It booted to the hhd. The windows logo showed, as well as a loading wheel. Then it froze on a black screen.Two the problem was solved by swapping seta cable from hhd to ssd, and vice versa.

[Windows7ge]

It's very possible it was just a cable issue. I've had that happen. Was this the drive you just deleted a bunch of Windows files off of?

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Yep. the board bios is a peice of shit. i cant change boot order, and luckley i could only switch the seta cables on those drives. i posted on build log. 

 

they are the two drives with the orange cables on the first photo.