2 windows installs, how to remove one

[RestUnknown]

Hi all

 

I have two ssd's in my new system, one is new, the other one from my old system. Today I wanted to completely wipe the old ssd to start fresh on it (it had just some files on it as back up), but I couldn't delete some partition because it apparantly had some old file system reservation on it (it used to run Windows years back), so I downloaded partition wizard to try to clear it. After that my system didn't want to boot anymore as it couldn't detect the normal windows install anymore. I'm quite sure I selected the correct partition to be deleted though, don't really know what went wrong.

 

So I reinstalled Windows on the old ssd cause during install it showed that the new ssd still had the data on it, luckily this worked and I lost no data. But now I have two ssd's with Windows installed (allbeit on the new ssd it won't boot of course).

 

The question since I only have two ssd's available and no spare ssd/hdd to safely copy the files I want to keep: I want to transfer the files to the old ssd with the working windows, format the new ssd and install windows and then copy the wanted files back from old to new and format the old again. Can this work? Won't the system 'freak' out because there are two windows installed or does the bios then just take into account the boot order if I set it correctly.

 

And yes, I'm probably best of buying a small ssd to transfer the data first to a safe location before I do this. Or is it riskfree?

 

Thx

[Gat Pelsinger]

@RestUnknown

 

Don't freak out, everything is easy.

 

No matter how many Windows installs you have, there will only be one boot manager for Windows which takes in account of the Windows installations you have.

 

To transfer the data, while the OS is running, you can use Hiren's BootCD https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/. Well you can do that using the standard Windows installer as well, but you would have to copy through the command line. Using Hiren's BootCD (it is not a CD, it can be burnt to a USB flash drive), the OS will boot directly off of the USB drive, just like the Windows installer (because this is built on Windows PE, which is also what the standard Windows installer is built on). So, in proper GUI, you can copy the files.

 

If you have any mess ups in partitions and all that kind of stuff and want to fully erase the drive, you can use the 'diskpart' utility in cmd, and in that, you can use the 'clean' command. If you would like to set every bit to zero on the drive, you can use 'clean all'. Beware though, this will take a while to execute and will wear you drive a bit.

 

After that you can install Windows on your new SSD.

[Fasauceome]

14 minutes ago, RestUnknown said:

I want to transfer the files to the old ssd with the working windows, format the new ssd and install windows and then copy the wanted files back from old to new and format the old again. Can this work?

yes, this might not be super efficient but in reality it's a pretty straightforward approach and should work perfectly fine. If I understand what you want correctly:
1) move all files off drive A onto drive B

2) format drive A so that it's completely empty

3) install windows fresh on drive A (I strongly recommend only having drive A connected to the system while you do this.)

4) move all files off of drive B onto drive A with its shiny new windows install

5) format drive B so that it's empty

 

this pretty much fine

[RestUnknown]

8 minutes ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

@RestUnknown

 

Don't freak out, everything is easy.

 

No matter how many Windows installs you have, there will only be one boot manager for Windows which takes in account of the Windows installations you have.

 

To transfer the data, while the OS is running, you can use Hiren's BootCD https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/. Well you can do that using the standard Windows installer as well, but you would have to copy through the command line. Using Hiren's BootCD (it is not a CD, it can be burnt to a USB flash drive), the OS will boot directly off of the USB drive, just like the Windows installer (because this is built on Windows PE, which is also what the standard Windows installer is built on). So, in proper GUI, you can copy the files.

 

If you have any mess ups in partitions and all that kind of stuff and want to fully erase the drive, you can use the 'diskpart' utility in cmd, and in that, you can use the 'clean' command. If you would like to set every bit to zero on the drive, you can use 'clean all'. Beware though, this will take a while to execute and will wear you drive a bit.

 

After that you can install Windows on your new SSD.

I used diskpart but it gave me an error it couldn't delete that partition because it had boot files on it. Looked on Google for this error which turned me to partition wizard.

8 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

yes, this might not be super efficient but in reality it's a pretty straightforward approach and should work perfectly fine. If I understand what you want correctly:
1) move all files off drive A onto drive B

2) format drive A so that it's completely empty

3) install windows fresh on drive A (I strongly recommend only having drive A connected to the system while you do this.)

4) move all files off of drive B onto drive A with its shiny new windows install

5) format drive B so that it's empty

 

this pretty much fine

Thanks, I looked around a bit and just to be sure I'm gonna buy a usb stick tomorrow as the total amount of gb is not that much and then at least I have two back ups.

[Gat Pelsinger]

@RestUnknown

11 hours ago, RestUnknown said:

I used diskpart but it gave me an error it couldn't delete that partition because it had boot files on it. Looked on Google for this error which turned me to partition wizard.

 

I said that the ultimate command would be the clean command which will remove every setting on the drive.

 

11 hours ago, RestUnknown said:

Thanks, I looked around a bit and just to be sure I'm gonna buy a usb stick tomorrow as the total amount of gb is not that much and then at least I have two back ups.

 

You really don't need to buy a new USB stick. @Fasauceome's solution is better than mine if you have enough space. Just copy the data from your new SSD to old, clean that SSD, then normally install Windows on it. You should be able to dual boot Windows on your new and old SSD. To remove the Windows install on your old SSD, through msconfig, remove the old Windows entry and then delete all the Windows's files.

 

EDIT - Don't tell me you tried to delete the partition when you are in Windows. Of course you can't do that then. You need to use diskpart through the Windows installer, or Hiren's BootCD that I mentioned. They are not installed OSes. They run off of USD drives.